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A SHORT APOLOGY 


FOR BEING 


A CHRISTIAN IN THE XXTH CENTURY 


A SHORT APOLOGY 
FOR BEING A CHRISTIAN 
IN THE XX™ CENTURY 


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BY ties a0 


REV, GEO. WILLIAMSON SMITH, LL.D. 


Sometime President of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut 


LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 
1916 


CoPYRIGHT, 1916, BY 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 


TO THE 
WASHINGTON CLERICUS 


at whose request 


these Papers are printed. 


ay 


CHAPTER 


I. 


ik 


IIT. 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE . 4 4 , ‘ : : 


OnE CAUSE OF DISSATISFACTION WITH 
RELIGION , L : ; . A 


‘Tap ScrentTiFIcC COSMOGONY’’ AS A 
FOUNDATION FOR RELIGION . : ; 


‘<Tr- Mosaic CosMOGONY’’ AS A FOUN- 
DATION FOR RELIGION . 


THE EXISTENCE OF Gop INCONSISTENT 
WITH THE PROPOSED ‘‘SCIENTIFIC 
CosMOGONY’’ r ; ‘ : 


Ts Marrer ETERNAL OR CREATED? : 


Is CHRISTIANITY A DELUSION OR 
FRAUD? j , ; : : 


MAN’s RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENT IMPELS 
Him to SEEK Gop : 


How Men May OBptaIn KNOWLEDGE OF 
DIVINE TRUTH 


THE BIBLE iolhy 
THe PRopHEecyY CONCERNING CHRIST . 


Tue New TESTAMENT . , : ; 
vii 


PAGE 


12 


22 


38 


39 


46 
52 
60 
63 


Vili 
CHAPTER 
XII. 
XIII. 


XIV. 


CONTENTS 


CHRIST CAME TO F'ULFIL, 
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


THE GOSPEL ONLY A System or IDEAL- 
ISM 


THe ATONEMENT 

THE RESURRECTION 

THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 

A Worp Asout OTHER Cutts 

THE TYRANNY OF WorDS AND IpEAs . 


A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 


PAGE 


80 
84 


93 

96 
104 
114 
119 
123 
130 


PREFACE 


During the last half-century the Churches have 
been attacked on the ground that science and his- 
torical criticism have demolished the foundations of 
Christianity, and shown it to be a delusion or a 
fraud. The assurance of the assailants, their un- 
compromising attitude, their air of finality and 
their peans over ‘‘the wreck of religion’’ tend to 
discredit the intelligence of those who hold to the 
Faith of the Fathers. 

The critics appear to make out a strong case 
against the Church by pointing to certain parts of 
ecclesiastical history, and they have a powerful aid 
in the word ‘‘scientific.’’ Science has done so much 
during the last century to benefit mankind, its meth- 
ods have proved so fruitful, that men have almost 
unlimited confidence in its claims and predictions. 
Mark a statement ‘‘scientific,’’ if only with a rub- 
ber stamp, and it will ‘‘go.”’ 

One cannot live in an atmosphere so charged with 
scepticism without being moved by the prevailing 
tone. Insensibly his views change, and a church 
member will sometimes find himself going on in his 
formal religious life while one article of the Christian 
faith after another fades from his mind. 

Some time ago a long letter was received from a 
valued friend who announced that he had been led 

1X 


x PREFACE 


to repudiate Christianity by the claims of ‘‘science’’ 
and ‘‘historical criticism.’’ The following is among 
the mildest of his statements: 

‘‘There is no ground in any reality upon which 
orthodox Christians can set up and sustain the claim 
that there is an essential difference, as to its origin, 
authority and efficiency, between Christianity and, 
say, Judaism, Mohammedanism or Buddhism. 

“‘T am trying to establish that there is but one 
religion, which is a very simple and natural reality, 
consisting in the desire and effort to do the will of 
God as it is revealed to each man, woman and child 
by his or her own conscience, without any absolutely 
necessary reference to any external authority, whom- 
soever or whatsoever. All are on the same footing as 
to their human origin, authority and efficiency.’’ 

Another had written that while he had nothing 
to put into the place of Christianity he repudiated 
it entirely, and he ‘‘believed that a later generation 
for whom psychical societies will not have worked 
in vain will be able to substitute something credible, 
more authoritative in tone for the worn-out dogmas 
of the past. Perhaps evidence will be forthcoming 
which will establish, not on the impregnable basis 
of the Holy Scriptures, but of science, such facts as 
shall constitute for us a sure and certain Hope in 
that which eye hath not seen,’’ ete. 

This is quoted from a book which was sent me. 
My friend made a long statement of his objections 
to the biblical cosmogony and to Christianity and 
demanded an apology, or justification for any man’s 
remaining a Christian in this twentieth century, 


- _—e ee 


| PREFACE xi 


‘¢when the light of science and criticism has shown 
its absurd and fraudulent character.’’ 

This was disquieting. The principles of Chris- 
tianity underlie our political and social institutions, 
they are interwoven into the fabric of human life, 
its precepts so far regulate the conduct of men, and 
its ideals are so much depended upon to furnish 
noble incentives for the cultivation of truth, honor 
and righteousness that the peremptory demand for 
their repudiation, when there is confessedly nothing 
in sight to take their place, may well cause astonish- 
ment, if not dismay. Such action threatens the 
loosening of all ties, the subversion of personal mo- 
rality and the confusion of human society. 

In response to the appeal the writer determined to 
examine the claim that ‘‘science had established a 
better cosmogony than that of Moses’’; and further 
to see if anything of value still attached to the ‘‘evi- 
dences of Christianity’? which had been relied upon 
for so many generations. Is any foundation left for 
the ‘‘fond belief’’ which is so confidently ‘‘consigned 
to the limbo of discarded things’’? Has man’s re- 
ligious nature changed? Have his religious needs 
diminished? Has the soul been asking questions 
which the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot answer? Has 
our ‘‘Light of the World’”’ grown dim and left us 
groping in darkness? 

The most of the Apology to my friend is contained 
in the following pages. On its receipt he wrote that 
‘the hoped I would go on and make it fuller, as 
he believed that though it might not convert him it 
would confirm many’’ whose: faith has been disturbed 


xii PREFACE 


and who feel that the belief of their fathers has been 
wounded unto death. 

While the writer has doubts about the value of 
sete a superficial defence of ‘‘the things’’ which were 

‘“‘most surely believed’? by our ‘‘fathers’’ he is cer- 
tain that the reading and study involved in its prepa- 
ration has been of great interest and value to himself, 
and he believes that a reéxamination of the whole 
subject would confirm the faith of many who are 
troubled by doubts. 


A SHORT APOLOGY 


FOR BEING 


A CHRISTIAN IN THE XXTH CENTURY 


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I 


ONE CAUSE OF ‘DISSATISFACTION WITH 
RELIGION 


My Dear FRIEND: 

The manuscript containing your indictment of 
Christianity, giving the reasons which led you to 
abandon it and challenging me to furnish an apology 
for continuing to hold it in this century of enlight- 
enment, was duly received. The letter was a painful 
surprise, as I had never had any intimation of such 
a radical change in your views. I knew of your 
dissatisfaction with certain ecclesiastical declarations, 
and I agreed with you that some of them are contrary 
to the spirit of the Gospel and oppressive to the con- 
science. I believe that they are also injurious to the 
Church; for when an error or fraud is exposed the 
whole system of faith and order is brought under 
suspicion. 

An investigation made by me a few years ago into 
some ecclesiastical claims required a review of many 
subjects on which you write, such as the Holy Scrip- 
tures, their origin, contents and authority, the or- 
ganization and administration of the Church, and so 
forth. In answering your letter it seems to me het- 
ter to give you some statements of my present view 
of such of these matters as: underlie your conten- 

3 


4 AN AGE OF DOUBT 


tions and to do it from your standpoint as far as 
possible. 

This is, I know, a period of intellectual change 
and transition. The spirit of the times is not in 
sympathy with many of the cherished beliefs of 
mankind in the past. The new century seems to 
breathe a different atmosphere from that of a hundred 
years ago, and in our expectation of a ‘‘new era’’ 
we pay less deference to what was once taught as 
the truth. Such periods have occurred before, but the 
Christian faith has again and again revived because 
the great human needs remain the same in all gen- 
erations and it alone has been able to meet and satisfy 
them. When, then, questions once considered settled 
are reopened and discussed with equal learning, abil- 
ity and zeal on both sides, it is particularly impor- 
tant that we be not carried off our feet by novelties 
which, it is asserted, are thoroughly established and 
which completely nullify ‘‘the received belief.’? The 
occasion may call for a reéxamination of the ques- 
tions ‘‘in the light of the new knowledge,’’ but the 
‘“‘new knowledge’’ itself should be examined and its 
conclusive character clearly shown before it is ac- 
cepted. The presumption, I may add, is in favor of 
what is already believed and it is not to be lightly 
surrendered. 

In my study of the scriptural questions I was 
much helped by a book on ‘‘The Historie Christ’ 
(I think that is its name) by the late Doctor Lester, 
whose Christian faith had been wrecked through ec- 
clesiastic troubles. Your difficulties, then, were not 
altogether new to me, nor your travail of soul be- 


oe 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 9) 


yond my understanding. Doctor Lester’s book is 
quite in line with much of your paper and it sets 
forth some popular objections in such a way that 
I could understand your point of view and judge of 
the character and importance of your criticisms. 
It is due to him to say that he is always respectful 
to those who hold ‘‘orthodox’’ views and his book 
is well and beautifully written. 

Other books of criticism have been sent me from time 
to time, until the view-point of criticism has become 
more or less familiar. 

I may be wrong in my diagnosis of your ease, but, 
as I have said, it seems to have originated much as 
that of many other men. The organization and ad- 
ministration of the Church, especially when some 
secular feature, with its inevitable imperfections, is 
presented as an ‘‘essential element’’ of Christianity, 
without which the Gospel would lack completeness, 
authority and living power, furnish a severe test of 
a man’s faith. We are told, for example, that Christ 
needs some particular form of church organization, 
or the assent to some abstract proposition, or His 
work will be ineffectual to salvation. If, then, that 
feature is found to be ecclesiastical and not of divine 
or apostolic authority, the revelations, teachings and 
nature of our Lord, with which the form of the or- 
ganization or the abstract proposition has been in- 
dissolubly bound up, seems to sink with it. If the 
Church is ‘‘teaching for doctrines the commandments 
of men’’ then the Gospel may be only a human de- 
liverance like the Koran and our Lord be a prophet 
like Moses and Isaiah. While Christianity may be 


6 AN AGE OF DOUBT 


superior to other cults in degree, it may, like the 
organization of the Church, be the same in kind and 
origin. What Hooker said is proved to be true: ‘‘The 
mixture of those things by speech which by nature 
are divided is the mother of all error.’’ 

Perhaps differing forms of organization and ad- 
ministration in the Church, some of which are not 
quite harmonious with modern views, have diverted 
men’s attention from the cause they were created to 
serve. 

Owing to its social character, Christianity must be 
organized, and it could not have transmitted its 
message of life to future generations without official 
teachers and other officers. The Apostles, we are told, 
‘‘ordained elders,’’ who were also called ‘ ‘bishops,’’ to 
preserve and transmit the doctrines of the Gospel in 
their integrity; and also, at the demand of the Com- 
munity or Church at Jerusalem, they appointed other 
officers for the distribution of alms. This provided 
for the essentials; here was the Church as certainly 
as when St. Sophia’s and St. Peter’s rose in their 
majesty on the banks of the Bosphorus and the Tiber. 
The work of full organization was long and difficult. 
To construct a system which should embrace faith, 
worship and discipline in harmonious cooperation, 
and provide for extending and strengthening a spir- 
itual kingdom which should be more comprehensive 
and enduring than had ever before been thought of, 
presented a problem of surpassing difficulty. The 
organization must be adapted to the political and 
social conditions of life to which its members were 
accustomed at that time, that they might adorn the 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 7 


doctrine of God by virtuous and godly living. But 
reflection may lead us to conclude that a revelation 
from God which is to serve mankind to the end of 
the world may not have been understood in all its 
richness and its manifold applications by the genera- 
tion which first received it; it might have greater 
depth and breadth of meaning than men had thought, 
and they could not expect an organization which met 
the needs of that day to meet, unchanged, those of a 
later period when the world had changed. There- 
fore the organization must have flexibility as well as 
permanence ; ‘‘be not too stiff or too easy,’’ in admit- 
ting changes, and be at once conservative and pro- 
gressive. ‘“‘The faith,’’ or the systematized expres- 
sion of the life, the works and the teachings of our 
Lord, must be guarded and transmitted in its in- 
tegrity, for the noblest of institutions could not be 
the Christian Church without the Christian faith; 
but, as Tertullian says: ‘‘Where there are three 
disciples, there is the Church.’’ 

The ecclesiastic structure is the product of history, 
and it should have within itself the power of adapta- 
tion and self-renewal. 

The organized Church has in many respects fared 
as human organizations fare. The zeal of the early 
disciples enabled it to do its work with a very simple 
and even fluid organization; but the rapid spread of 
the Gospel soon called for a more compact structure 
than synagogues, or Collegia, which were somewhat 
loosely framed and had but little affiliation with each 
other. The churches were conscious that they were 
units of a great whole and each local organization must 


8 AN AGE OF DOUBT 


be correlated with that of others. The simple elemen- 
tal Christianity of the New Testament which inspired 
individual Christians must be formalized to embrace 
all Christians, and individual beliefs and tastes were 
to be subordinated to the common tradition and dis- 
cipline of the great community. Hence an eccle- 
siastical Christianity, formal and organized, which 
speaks with an authority no individual can pretend 
to. In place of the simple ceremonies described by 
Justin Martyr (A. D. 140) we soon have an elaborate 
ritual, with forms and ceremonies of an imposing 
character which aspire to set forth worthily the 
dignity, honor and glory of the Lord of heaven and 
earth. 

In place of the elemental and essential Gospel as 
revealed by our Lord we have long and careful state- 
ments on many abstruse points in metaphysics and 
philosophy. Such a change was natural. Christian 
teachers were called upon to meet the philosophy of 
the day. Religion must have its message for the 
learned as well as the ignorant, and the dogmatic 
literature of the Church enables us to trace the cur- 
rent of human thought in different ages. A perpetual 
conflict with heresies seemed to demand a formal and 
‘‘fixed interpretation’’ of the New Testament revela- 
tions from an official tribunal. This imposed a check 
on speculation and perhaps on knowledge; and the 
adaptability of the Church to times and seasons was 
seriously modified. Church officials became a hier- 
archy and ecclesiastical power sometimes usurped the 
authority of reason and scripture. The Church grew 
into a mighty empire, and Constantine was glad to 


AN AGE OF DOUBT 9 


harness it into the service of the state. Its constitu- 
tion became monarchiecal, like the states of that day, 
and still remains so in the greater part of Christen- 
dom, and its inflexibility has bred some of the evil 
as well as the good inseparable from a monarchy. 

But much as the Church is blamed for many a 
dark transaction, sometimes for actions contrary to 
our Lord’s positive teachings, it will not suffer in 
comparison with other organizations and govern- 
ments by which it was controlled during the same 
period. While its administration was never ideal, 
on the whole, it suited the conditions of life. 

Looking over your paper I find, as I have found 
in the books of scientific and historic criticism, the 
sharpest attacks are made upon the Church, its 
ceremonies, discipline and dogmatic utterances. These 
are represented as due to the teachings of the New 
Testament Scriptures, at least as they were officially 
explained by the clergy. But I do not propose to 
speak on the subject of ecclesiastical Christianity 
save as it may be involved incidentally in the ele- 
mentary doctrines of essential Christianity. Your 
real difficulties could not be met by a defence of the 
churches. May I beg you to remember that Chris- 
tianity is of greater value than any ecclesiastical 
organization ? 

I believe that the way of escape from much of 
your present scepticism is to heed the admonition of 
St. Peter to men in like perplexity: ‘‘Sanctify the 
Lord God in your hearts’’; i. e., as I understand it, 
distinguish between what is of God and what is of 
man. Because the organization of the Church was 


10 AN AGE OF DOUBT 


largely effected by men as they were (and it had to 


be), it does not follow that the cause it was meant 
to serve was of human origin, commended only by 
human sanction. An organization which is created to 
further a cause runs away at times with the cause, 
or subordinates it to its own interest. This is common 
in political life, and it may be so at times in religion. 
I think the Jewish Church at the time of our Lord 
had largely appropriated both the law and the 
prophets to ecclesiastical interests and for the ad- 
vantage of its officers. Now, we do not repudiate the 
Declaration of Independence because of faulty legis- 
lation or because certain politicians are charged with 
corruption. It is well to remember that men can 
make the Church the field of their activities and am- 
bitions as well as political, mercantile or social life. 
It is not, therefore, a strange thing to find that ‘‘the 
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of 
life’? have lodged there at different periods. Still, 
there is no calling in life in which there are such 
inner restraints on personal ambition and such in- 
centives to high and holy endeavor as in the Church 
of Christ, and these exercise a purifying power within 
the Church, protest against corruption in life and 
doctrine, and make for reformation. At no period 
have saintly men and women been lacking, for the 
Holy Spirit can work through any channel. 

Your claim that Christianity ‘‘as an ideal’’ would 
go on ‘‘developing’’ in the world and rising to higher 
standards and better lives by abandoning faith in 
Him who is accepted as the living standard of truth, 
honor and righteousness, and who is generally be- 


i 


AN AGE OF DOUBT ui 


lieved to be the giver of moral and religious power, 
is, I am convinced, unfounded. Christianity has 
spread only by preaching Christ. We believe in 
persons. From them, or from our belief in them, 
come all the inspiration, the restraints and incen- 
tives of life. The more perfect we hold them to be 
the more we observe their precepts. Abstract terms 
like ‘‘idealization,’? which you propose to substi- 
tute for the personal Christ, are to most men terms 
of ignorance, and have little force to move or restrain 
them. | 

While your criticisms of the Bible form one vast 
and varied whole, they contain a number of specific 
propositions, some of which seem unobjectionable, 
some questionable, some irrelevant and some positively 
destructive of not only Christianity, but also of all 
positive religious faith—they divide naturally into 
two main contentions; one of which faults is what 
you call the Biblical ‘‘cosmology and anthropology,’’ 
and it is proposed to substitute for them the ‘‘scientific 
teachings of to-day’’; and the other attacks the 
foundations of Christianity and condemns the Gospel 
as a fond invention or a fraud. It is proposed to 
substitute for it religion as interpreted by ‘‘science,’’ 
or, briefly, ‘‘natural religion,’’ or the Religion of Na- 
ture, ‘‘as each race or people may understand it,’’ 
and thus present ‘‘a plan for universal religion.’’ 

While I promise to look at the Christological por- 
tion of your paper as much as possible from your 
view-point and eriticise it from that point of view, 
I cannot promise to do the same for other parts of 
the paper. JI must ask more freedom in dealing 


12 THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 


with the philosophical questions and with your views 
in regard to the finality of your so-called ‘‘scientifie”’ 
claims. 

Before undertaking to examine your scientific views 
I beg leave to point out that there is no necessary 
antagonism between Christianity and modern science. 
There are many scientific men of high repute who 
are devout Christians, and who find no inconsistency 
in holding their faith in Christ as the Saviour of 
the world and in accepting the results of their own 
study and labor at the same time. 


II 


‘THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY”’ AS A FOUN- 
DATION FOR RELIGION 


In your ‘‘appeal for a new apologetic’’ I find the 
following propositions: ‘‘Ultimately, so at least I 
like to think, all theological differences, such as ours, 
resolve themselves into questions about comparative 
cosmogonies and anthropologies. 

‘“There are two cosmogonies: (1) the super- 
naturalistic cosmogony, which is the basis of the im- 
perial or sacerdotal uniqueness of your Christian 
orthodoxy, and (2) the naturalistic cosmogony, which 
is the basis of the republican or democratic levelism 
of my Christian heterodoxy. 

‘“‘According to your cosmogony, the universe with 
all that therein is owes its existence to an external, 
creative power which is not its own. 


THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 13 


‘‘ According to my cosmogony, the universe with 
all that therein is owes its existence to an internal, 
evolutionary power which is its own. 

‘“‘The great theological books of the Old and New 
Testaments are respectively Genesis and the Gospel 
according to St. John. Upon my theory as to the 
basic assumption of theological systems, these books 
should begin with cosmogonies, and as a matter of 
fact they do. 

‘‘The cosmogony of Genesis, the basis of the old 
sacerdotal theology of the Jews, is ‘In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth.’ 

‘‘™he cosmogony of the Gospel according to John, 
the basis of the new sacerdotal theology of Christians, 
both of the Catholic and Protestant types, is: ‘In 
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. 
All things were made through Him.’ 

‘‘The first Articles of our Catholic Creed and 
Protestant Confession of Faith may also be quoted in 
evidence of the correctness of my opinion, that the 
question of all theological questions, the one lying 
back of every other, is that of cosmogony. 

‘‘The first Article of the Catholic Creed is: ‘I be- 
lieve in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven 
and earth.’ 

‘‘The first Article of our Anglo-Protestant con- 
fession is: ‘There is but one living, and true God, 

. . Maker and Preserver of all things both visible 
and invisible.’ 

‘‘The cosmogonal article of my unstereotyped 
ereed, roughly and diffusely stated, is: I assume the 
existence of one God, to whose idealization the uni- 


14 THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 


verse owes its existence by evolution, not creation, 
for the divine ideal carries the potentiality of fully 
evolutionizing itself into all possible forms and de- 
grees of physical and psychical life. 

‘‘The conclusion that the question as to the origin 
of the universe lies at the basis of all systems of 
theology is confirmed by the fact that some cosmogony 
is also at the basis of every system of philosophy, 
and that all philosophical systems, if they are up to 
date, have been, like such theological systems, revo- 
lutionized by Darwinism, which is the basis of our 
new cosmogony. 

‘“‘The teaching of our Sacred Scriptures, cecu- 
menical creeds, articles of religion and prayer-book 
services concerning the special creation, ideal environ- 
ments and terrible fall of our first parents, our in- 
heritance of their sins, and the consequent necessity 
of a mediatorial deliverer from Satan, who by his 
alluring and deceptive arts thwarted, so far as the 
race of man was concerned, the original purposes of 
God, and in short the whole sacerdotal system of the- 
ology and ecclesiology, especially the orthodox dogma 
of the incarnation, have, as the result of the Dar- 
winian cosmology, become as antiquated and useless 
as the pyramids of Egypt.’ 

And the following: 

‘The universe as a whole has all the potentialities 
of its own life within itself, and this is equally true 
of all the differentiated realities which enter into the 
constitution of it; therefore we rightly affirm that 
each representative of the race of man has within 
himself or herself all the potentialities of the life 


THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 15 


that is here in the present, or that is to be anywhere 
in the future. 

‘‘The universe is the result of a natural evolution 
from the primeval nebula or fire mist to man and 
his civilization or salvation; therefore there is no 
truth, or at least none that is not in need of a radical 
restatement, in the basic representations of redemp- 
tive interpretations of religion, not excepting those of 
Christian orthodoxy.’’ 

You claim that these, and twenty more like theses, 
have been ‘‘scientifically established,’’ and you de- 
mand that ‘‘theological doctrines be aligned with 
these scientifically established facts.’? Then Chris- 
tianity, Buddhism and other religions will be on a 
level. 

When I was much younger, and had not learned 
to discriminate, I stood in awe of all critics and 
scientific men, and all dogmatic assertions about 
things outside of the realm of human knowledge im- 
pressed me greatly. At a later day JI learned that 
scientific men, like those in other callings, vary in 
knowledge and temperament. It has been my privi- 
lege to meet profound scholars in science, and also 
superficial scholars, and I learned that those who 
popularize the discoveries which amaze the world are 
not always the ‘‘authorities.’’ 

Some features of this new cosmogony impressed me 
at once. Nearly all the ‘‘scientific’? views of the 
universe, its origin, content, power and some char- 
acteristics which I do not understand, are based upon 
no established fact, and in the nature of things are 
outside of the realm of human knowledge. It seems 


16 THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 


to me a misuse of terms to speak of ‘knowing scien- 
tifically’’ what is manifestly outside of the sphere of 
Science. The universe itself is an established fact, 
and the order of nature, the existence of living 
creatures, including man and his dominion or right 
to rule over other living creatures and to the fruits 
of the earth, ete. But when men come to account for 
these things they present hypotheses where there is 
nothing provable. Those hypotheses are declared to 
be ‘‘scientifically established facts’? and people are 
called upon to accept them as the true basis of re- 
ligion, in place of the ‘fexploded hypothesis’’ of 
Genesis and what is based upon it. 

Then all that relates to the Christian religion must 
be rejected as ‘“unscientifie,’’ although it is supported 
by an experience which has been regarded for hun- 
dreds of years as sufficient to establish it as true. 
This evidence is said to be worthless; but what has 
no real evidence to support it, and in the nature of 
things can have none, is to be accepted as ‘‘scientifie’’ 
truth. 

The emphasis upon ‘‘scientific. knowledge’’ as the 
only basis for religion leads me to think that men 
sometimes use terms in different senses. Let me ex- 
plain: because, according to my understanding of 
terms, ‘‘sciencs’’ and ‘‘philosophy,’’ which you use 
interchangeably, reach different kinds of knowledge. 
We depend upon ‘‘science’’ to discover and establish 
a “‘fact’’ or ‘‘facts,’’ for ‘‘science’’ ig ‘exact knowl- 
edge.’? When a scientific man has done this he may 
proceed to account for the fact which he has dis- 
covered, and it is quite natural for him to do so. 


THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 17 


But he then leaves the field of science and enters that 
of philosophy. The two fields are distinct; for the 
man who has never discovered or established a fact, 
and knows little about the methods of scientific in- 
vestigation, may accept it on the authority of a 
scientific man and use it in his reasoning. In a 
review of the works of Herbert Spencer it is 
stated that ‘‘he too readily accepted as facts 
such statements as supported his philosophical pur- 
poses. ”’ 

Or the scientific man, having discovered a fact, 
may not care to seek its cause, but proceed to apply 
it to useful purposes, as Mr. Edison does. 

Or the scientific man may be satisfied with his dis- 
covery and make it known to the world at large, in- 
diffent alike to philosophy or profit. 

Your cosmogony does not seem to me to be ‘‘scien- 
tific,’’ in the proper meaning of the term, but rather 
a philosophical hypothesis which is accepted as a 
fact, though it is really outside of the realm of 
science. This is not unusual in the case of plausible 
assumptions which meet the wishes of mankind. And 
there is never a lack of ignorant and pretentious seek- 
ers after repute or profit who sometimes make reck- 
less statements, draw unwarranted conclusions and 
shame the real scientific men by nnauthorized and 
unfounded declarations. They claim the authority 
of science for much that is only a matter of opinion 
and which is sometimes merely a rhetorical device to 
round a period. Science, like all other kinds of 
knowledge, has its field and its limitations, and this 
is acknowledged by its ablest students. 


18 THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 


A scientific man, as I have said, has to discover 
facts; to interpret those facts is the work of phi- 
losophy. Science, gua science, cannot reach a philo- 
sophical conclusion, nor can philosophy, unless the 
facts furnished are reliable and complete in the 
philosophical sphere. A conclusion from insufficient 
premises is likely to be wrong. Now we find Pro- 
fessor Bateman, in the world’s convention lately held 
in Australia, declaring that Darwin and Herbert 
Spencer can no longer be regarded as authorities 
because later scientific discoveries have vitiated their 
philosophy. If you should print the paper you sent 
me I should regret it because I am persuaded that 
some of the ‘‘scientific’’ statements you make would 
be repudiated in scientific circles. 

Science is a dangerous thing on which to build as 
a finality because it is progressive and never ex- 
haustive. We frame a theory to embrace or cover the 
facts known, generally as a ‘“‘working hypothesis,’’ 
and it stands until facts inconsistent with it are 
brought to light. The Ptolemaic theory of astronomy 
sufficed until new astronomical facts were discovered 
which it could not account for. Then the clumsy 
Tychonic came in, only to be superseded by the 
Copernican, which now prevails. Although it meets 
all the astrononvical facts now known to us, it is only 
a “‘working hypothesis,’’ because while it covers the 
facts now known the transit of Mercury tomorrow 
morning (November 7, 1914) may show something in- 
consistent with it which will call for a modification of 
the theory or the framing of a new one. The experi- 
ments of Mendel, I am told, have dealt a staggering 


THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 19 


blow to Darwin’s ‘‘Origin of Species.’? Men build 
upon the theory of present ‘‘scientific’’ cosmological 
and anthropological facts as if they were final; and 
yet the discoveries of tomorrow may utterly destroy 
the theory. The value of science to the world can 
hardly be overstated, as I have said, and none are 
more indebted to it than biblical students. By its 
light we are daily better able to understand the teach- 
ings of the Bible. But as in the nature of things 
it cannot reach finality, it can never furnish such a 
stable foundation to build upon as mathematical 
truth, or moral axioms, and, I may add, ‘‘the Sermon 
on the Mount.’’ — } 
Perhaps I may be pardoned for recalling that 
scientific methods may be applied deductively to 
an hypothesis, and so furnish a satisfactory philo- 
sophic system; but until the hypothesis is established 
as a fact it cannot be accepted as more than specu- 
lative or as a ‘‘scientific theory.’’ J. Ward tells us 
that ‘‘absolute beginnings are beyond the pale of 
science.’’ The philosopher Locke remarks that ‘‘the 
systems of natural philosophy which have obtained 
are to be read more to know the hypotheses than with 
hopes to gain there a comprehensive scientifical and 
satisfactory knowledge of the works of nature.’’ 
Ruskin observes that ‘‘in science you must not talk 
before you know.’’ When Archimedes demonstrated 
that he could move the world by mechanical instru- 
ments if he had a pow sto, or fulerum, his demon- 
stration did not establish the existence of the pou 
sto, and he did not ‘‘move the world.’’ Your cos- 
mogony is not “‘scientifically established’’ by showing 


20 THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 


that if it were established it would account for the 
‘‘phenomenal universe.’’ 

My own view is that ‘‘science is knowledge gained 
by systematic observation, experiment or reasoning.’’ 

You will, therefore, understand why I find ‘‘con- 
fusion of thought’’ in many of your theses, and why 
it seems to me dangerous for you to depend upon 
‘*scientists’’ without being able to examine their 
facts or their methods of reasoning. All understand 
the importance of reasoning only upon well ascer- 
tained truths if they are going to frame a ‘‘cos- 
mogony and anthropology’’ which will serve as a 
basis for religion or philosophy. Your thesis that 
the phenomenal universe ‘‘owes its existence to an 
internal evolutionary power which is its own’’ is 
quite absurd philosophically; for unless a thing ex- 
ists it can have no attribute or power, and nothing 
ean spring from it. ‘‘Hx nihilo nihil fit,’’ says 
Lucretius, the sceptic. Again, when you say that it 
is due to the ‘‘idealization’’ of God and not to ‘‘crea- 
tion,’’ for the ‘‘idealization of God carries the po- 
tentiality of evolving itself into all possible forms 
and degrees of physical and psychical life,’’ you as- 
sume a knowledge of God and His method of working 
which neither you nor any other creature can have. 

I fear that the same vicious method of baseless as- 
sumption pervades the whole ‘‘cosmogony and an- 
thropology’’ for which you contend. As a further 
example of reckless statement you write that no ‘‘sci- 
entific’’ professor in any university or college believes 
that a man is more essentially unique as to the original 
character of either his physical or psychical life than 


THE SCIENTIFIC COSMOGONY 21 


a bird, as ‘‘both alike have the serpent as a common 
ancestor.’’ Now, both the assertion as to the una- 
nimity of scientific professors and as to the common 
ancestry of the bird and man remain to be proved 
by count and by example. I do not think that it is 
proved that man developed or evolved from an 
anthropoid ape. In the light of the knowledge at 
hand it seems improbable. In no record of the human 
race, now extending over many thousands of years, 
is there any mention of a lower creature’s developing 
into a higher. They may, in their life, pass suc- 
cessively into different forms to fill out the circle of 
life, as a grub into a butterfly, but they do not per- 
petuate in higher form, but in the lower; the 
egg of the butterfly produces a grub, so far as I have 
ever heard. 

If your contention were true that ‘‘evolution’’ 
of the higher order from the lower is the ‘‘law of 
nature,’’ anthropoid apes would be turning into men 
today, since the law of nature remains unaltered, if 
not unalterable. The cat of today is no more religious 
than was the cat in Egypt 4,000 years ago. If you 
say, with some ‘‘scientific men,’’ that the evolution 
of ‘‘apes’’ into men brought in the element of free- 
will which superseded the lower law of evolution, you 
open the way for the ‘‘tale of Genesis’’ and a lot 
of myths and legends found in Eastern story. 

However, as it is a question of processes and not 
of origins, and as we have no means of knowing per- 
sonally the manner in which God has proceeded in 
His work of producing the phenomenal universe, it 
is not a question of vital import to me. Rather, 


22 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 


your fixing a certain specified manner in which God 
wrought as a matter of religious faith established 
scientifically, when we certainly can know nothing 
about it scientifically, at the very time you are claim- 
ing that what we believe has no evidence worthy of 
consideration, leads naturally to an ‘‘et tu quoque.’’ 

As generally understood your Darwinianism substi- 
tutes a self-working if not also a self-created universe 
for a God who is a person, and destroys the possibility 
of real religion. <A religion without a god, or whose 
god is unknowable, is but a sentiment, or an erdolon, 
as the Greeks called it. 


Til 


‘‘THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY’’ AS A FOUNDA- 
TION FOR RELIGION 


The Assyrian tablets brought to light by archzolo- 
gists have been partly deciphered and translated by 
scholars, and in them we find frequent statements in 
regard to events in the early history of the world and 
many of them have been incorporated in the Book 
of Genesis. Some belong to a period previous to 
recorded history. We may conclude from their fre- 
quent repetition and wide dissemination that, as tra- 
ditions at least, they point to actual facts in the early 
history of the world and are of more than specula- 
tive value. They have an importance which justifies 
their insertion in any treatise on cosmogony. But 
as the biblical cosmogony is repudiated by you as 


THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 23 


unscientific and ‘‘unhistorical’’ I shall try to deal 
with it from your point of view. It appears to me 
worthy of a respectful treatment which it does not 
always receive. We are told that ‘‘under the garb 
of the simplest narrative Genesis deals in a masterly 
way with the deepest problems,’’ and I think a brief 
examination of them will bear out this statement. 
You repudiate it as a historic account which is meant 
to be accepted ‘‘literally.’? While not venturing to 
pass upon this question I beg leave to observe that 
while it is in didactic form, such as we use with chil- 
dren, it is a form not unbecoming to the setting forth 
of divine truth. If it were put forth as a parable, 
would it be less instructive or true than when taken 
literally? You, I am sure, would not repudiate the 
parables as teaching what is untrue. As expressing 
truth in its highest literary form the parables are 
unrivalled. They are, in fact, the truest history of 
human experience. No historical character is more 
actual to us than the Good Samaritan. 

If you compare the brief statement of Genesis with 
your cosmogony and anthropology I think you will 
see that Moses, or ‘‘the Babylonians’’ as you claim, 
were more prudent and painstaking in what they 
said and what they did not say than the professional 
sceptics. 

Like your friends and teachers the author was to 
take the known facts and use them as a foundation 
for religious and moral instruction. Both, we will 
agree, had the same facts before them: the existence 
of God, which you postulate, and which they may 
assume; the existence of the phenomenal universe; 


24 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 


the existence of man and lower forms of life—the 
former exercising ‘‘dominion’’ over the earth and its 
inhabitants—the lower creatures finding the world 
sufficient for them, but man finding it unsatisfactory 
in many ways, and man, when he lived an animal 
life, tormented with fears and anxieties of which the 
lower creatures had no knowledge, ete. 

Such were the facts before them. Now all that 
either party could do, from your point of view, was 
to take the known facts and frame a ‘‘working hy- 
pothesis’’ as a basis for moral and religious instruc- 
tion. 

In Genesis we read: ‘‘In the beginning God cre- 
ated the heavens and the earth. And the earth was 
waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: 
and there was light. And God saw the light that 
it was good. And God divided the light from the 
darkness. And God ealled the light Day, and the 
darkness He called Night. And there was evening, 
and there was morning, one day.’’ 

Here we have a simple statement in concrete terms, 
suitable for even children: God was the Creator of 
the phenomenal universe, i. e., He brought it into 
actual being when it had not existed before; the erea- 
tion of light and darkness, of day and night, of the 
glory and the gloom that all are familiar with; and 
then we have the delight of the Creator in His work, 
for in His eyes, as in ours, it was ‘‘good.’’ He is 
then a God who has affinity with us, a moral Creator, 
who rejoices in His work as ‘‘good,’’ and so is re- 


THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 25 


vealed to us in a loving and attractive character. 
As a basis for moral and religious instruction it is a 
good ‘‘working hypothesis’’—so far. Then follow 
in the same line of statement the successive creations, 
according to the natural, logical and sensible orders, 
of the different animals. Like Thales, the father of 
Greek philosophy (cire. B. C. 600), the writer tells 
us that animal life began in water (Gen. 1:2), and 
advanced to terrestrial creatures. The order com- 
mends itself to the ordinary observer, and is justified 
by comparative anatomy, and at each pause there is 
the same statement that ‘‘God saw that it was 
good.”’ 

In the creation of man a higher note is struck. 
There is a pause—so far the circle of earthly crea- 
tions is complete—then comes the tremendous decla- 
ration that over this created world which is ‘‘good’’ 
shall be placed a being—‘‘created’’ as were other 
denizens of the earth, and therefore in affiance with 
them—who shall also participate in the nature of 
the Creator and exercise His authority over the 
earth. Therefore the breath or soul of a larger and 
higher life is imparted to the animal nature. I need 
hardly ask attention to the fact that this ‘‘dominion”’ 
of man is as much a matter of our knowledge and 
experience as light and darkness, nor point out the 
dignity with which the human race is invested, and 
the consequent standard of worthy action set before 
men in an appeal made to their higher nature. As a 
foundation for an ethical and religious system it 
seems adequate. 

With the same facts before you, namely, the being 


26 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 


of God (which you postulate), of the world, which 
must have had a beginning (as you grant that it did 
have), and the existence of light and darkness, and 
the other facts common to Moses, or ‘‘the Babylo- 
nians,’’ you present your ‘‘working hypothesis’’ as 
a basis of moral and religious instruction. You re- 
pudiate the idea of its being a ‘‘hypothesis,’’ and 
claim that it is a ‘‘scientifically established fact,’’ on 
the authority of scientists who, as you know very 
well, could have no more knowledge of the matter 
than yourself. And this is your ‘‘scientifically estab- 
lished fact’’ on which to base your ethical and re- 
ligious system: ‘‘I assume the existence of one God 
to whose idealization the universe owes its existence 
by evolution, not creation; for the divine ideal car- 
ries the potentiality of fully evolutionizing itself into 
all possible forms and degrees of physical and psy- 
chical life.’’ 

You agree with Moses or ‘‘the Babylonians’’ in 
attributing the existence of the universe to God, but 
that is about all you have in common with them. 
They are modestly contented to permit Him to do 
His work His own way, and they state the fact 
in the most general terms possible. He ‘‘created 
the heavens and the earth.’? This excites your im- 
agination. ‘‘No, He did not create it.’’ ‘‘He ideal- 
ized it into being,’’ you say. We may imagine the 
author of Genesis looking up, and asking calmly, 
‘“What’s the difference between ‘creating’ and bring- 
ing into being by ‘idealization’? He may have done 
so, but as I, personally, know nothing about the 
manner in which God ‘creates’ I confine myself to 


THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 27 


stating the fact as generally and reverently as I 
can.’’ 

But there are people who will find it a strange 
thing that one who, while postulating the existence 
of God and declaring at the same time that He is 
‘‘unknown and unknowable,’’ should be so emphatic 
in limiting Him to a specific manner of working, a 
knowledge which no other creature would dare to 
attribute even to the ‘‘angel of the divine Presence.’’ 
I confess that I am at a loss to understand your 
meaning. 

It is not strange that the writer of Genesis should 
differ from you in describing the origin of the various 
forms of animal life on the earth. His object is to 
make God the supreme object of worship, and ac- 
cordingly he refers us to Him in all matters calling 
for explanation. ‘‘Whence is the race of men and 
flocks and herds?’’ is the theme of the heathen poet. 
Moses answers by taking the living creatures on the 
earth as they are classified in popular apprehension 
and tells us that God made them directly, or com- 
manded the earth to bring them forth ‘‘after their 
kind,’’ in natural sequence, each a separate creation, 
and pronouncing the result of His work ‘‘good,’’ 
gave them His blessing. 

At this point you take issue with him. You claim 
that ‘‘both as to his body and mind man has been 
naturally evolved from the lower forms of animal 
life, being as to his pedigree a naturally developed 
species from some species of the anthropoid ape, 
which was also naturally evolved from some species 
of the mammalia, which again naturally developed 


28 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 


from some species of serpents, and so on, no doubt, 
all the way back to the ameeba and on to the primi- 
tive life germ.”’ 

Now, while it is agreed that whether creation was 
effected by special acts of divine power in each 
successive order of beings, or that they came into 
existence by ‘‘evolution’’ from a primitive in which 
they were potentially present, the work was that of 
God, the manner in which God’s action is presented 
makes a difference in its educational value. Since 
the known facts are the same for both parties, and 
nothing is said about the method employed, I think 
it will be agreed that the presentation made by Moses 
of each order as a particular work of God is most 
suitable for religious and ethical purposes. Your 
claim to a ‘“‘scientifie knowledge’’ of fact for your 
view is, I think, unwarranted. There is not, and in 
the nature of things there cannot be, any such scien- 
tifie knowledge of the beginning of different living 
organisms as you claim. 

I once saw part of a shoemaker’s collection of shoes, 
beginning with a bit of rough bark for the sole of 
the foot, then the sandal, the wooden shoe and so on 
up to the most elaborate foot covering. Each kind 
was a separate production. The advance had not 
been made by one shoe into a superior one by its 
own power, but in the mind of artificer. So Moses 
represents Creation. Each order is a separate crea- 
tion due to the progressive purpose of the divine 
Artificer, whose wisdom, honor and glory were mani- 
fested in each advance. By your method no such 
effect is produced, but the greater the wisdom and 


THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 29 


power manifested the further from sight is God 
Himself. It is as though the piece of bark for the 
sole of the foot was the parent of the whole series. 
According to your religious and ethical system the 
ape, the snake, the amceba is nearer to God than the 
man who, alone of all creatures on this earth, can 
know Him and have any religion at all. 

If you point out, as you may well do, that the 
analogy is not complete because there is no life in 
the first number of the series, I beg you to reflect 
that even if the series had been due to a development 
from an internal power in the bark it would still 
have been the work of the artificer because he had 
endowed it with the power of development, and it 
is then only a question of method and process—not 
of origin, unless, indeed, you claim that the bark 
shoe was self-created and self-endowed, which is un- 
_thinkable. But for ethical and religious purposes 
the biblical method is the better. 

Again I find the existence of God as you present 
Him quite incompatible with your theory of the uni- 
verse and of what La Mettrie calls ‘‘L’Homme 
Machine’’—‘‘Man only a machine.’’ Pardon me 
if I point out what inconsistency His existence seems 
to produce. I have no doubt that you have found it 
consistent, but possibly my failure to discover it may 
eall attention to the desirability of looking at it 
again. 

I am at a loss to understand how you can claim 
that your ‘‘naturalistic cosmogony and anthropology 
are the basis of republicanism’’ or democracy, and 
the ‘‘supernaturalistic cosmogony and anthropology 


30 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 


the basis of imperialism or sacerdotalism.’’ You claim 
that the former, ‘‘republicanism,’’ is contained in the 
statements that the universe is self-created by ‘‘evo- 
lution,’’ or by the ‘‘idealization’’ of God, and is po- 
tentially able to evolutionize itself into all possible 
forms and degrees of physical and psychical life, and 
that man is the result of such evolution from the 
amoeba; and that the latter, ‘‘imperialism,’’ is con- 
tained in the early chapters of Genesis and the Gospel 
according to St. John, which assert that man was a 
special creation of God. 

It has always seemed to me of great significance 
that Moses declared that God made man in His own 
image and thus distinguished him from all other 
creatures. Moreover, the manner in which the crea- 
tion of man is described seems to endow him with 
“‘inalienable rights’? as no other cosmogony does. 
In him personality and individuality are the em- 
phatic characteristics. While all other creatures came 
into being in genera only one man was created ‘‘out 
of the dust of the ground.’’ His relation to the 
Creator, unlike that of other creatures, is a personal 
and filial relation. He is ‘‘after’’ the ‘‘likeness’’ of 
God who made him. God’s care of him is the care 
of a person, special and particular. He has personal 
rights and duties; they are fundamental and in- 
alienable. They were not impaired when a consort 
was given him, for she was not ‘‘made out of the 
dust of the ground,’’ but of his own substance, and 
this personal relation to God was not divided or 
decreased, but was participated in by her and became 
the fundamental fact in the life of every member of 


THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 31 


the race. The solidarity of the race depends upon 
it. In all ‘‘helps meet,’’ for man’s development into 
the likeness of God, such as the family, state and 
Church,—these rights must be preserved and guarded. 
For as our Lord set it forth, ‘‘the Sabbath was made 
for man, and not man for the Sabbath,’’—a pregnant 
declaration. Personality must not be suppressed. 

Senator Root states this fundamental fact as the 
foundation of democratic government. He tells us 
that there are but two underlying theories of man in 
the social state. One is the theory of the ancient 
Greek republics in which the state is the starting- 
point from which rights are deduced, and the indi- 
vidual holds rights only as a member of the state. 
This was the theory of Greece and Rome and the 
Italian republics. 

The other is the theory of Magna Charta and of 
the American republic; that the individual has in- 
alienable rights, as Calvin expressed it, of which no 
government may deprive him and to secure which 
all governments exist. 

How can your cosmogony and cosmology lay a solid 
religious foundation for the ‘‘inalienable rights’’ of 
man and for the American republic when his indi- 
viduality and personality are quite ignored? 


32 A GODLESS COSMOGONY 


IV 


THE EXISTENCE OF GOD INCONSISTENT 
WITH THE PROPOSED ‘‘SCIENTIFIC 
COSMOGONY’”’ 


You postulate the being of God and then say that 
He is ‘‘unknown’’ and unknowable. ‘‘Every man 
makes his own God.’’ I believe that men’s concep- 
tions of God differ, but not in essentials. A reference 
to the Lord’s Prayer, which you say you use con- 
stantly, would seriously modify your statement. You 
grant that you know His existence and His ‘‘ideali- 
zation’’ of the ‘‘phenomenal universe’’ into being. 
You confess to a knowledge of His relation to you 
as that of ‘‘Father.’’ Is a child’s father ‘‘unknown’’ 
to a child because he is not understood in his char- 
acter as citizen, scholar, business man, neighbour, 
etc., but only in the one vital relation of father? 
What kind of a God would He be whom a man could 
comprehend with all His attributes? God can be 
known to man or to any creatures only in His rela- 
tions to them. In those relations you know Him. 
Belief in a ‘‘God declared’’ unto men and not a God 
constructed by each one for himself according to 
his earthly desires has been making the world bet- 
ter, “‘here a little and there a little,’? during the 
last two thousand years. 

In your postulate of the existence of God you seem 
to me to have vitiated your argument. You contend 
in one place that the ‘‘phenomenal universe owes its 


A GODLESS COSMOGONY 33 


existence to an internal evolutionary power which 
is its own’’; that is, if I understand you, ‘‘the phe- 
nomenal universe’’ is self-created and self-endowed, 
and functions by its own power. Now, if there be 
a God, as you say there is, He is either immanent in 
this universe or He exists outside of it, or both. In 
the former case He may control the ‘‘evolutionary 
power’’ from within; in the latter from without. In 
either case He is, as Aristotle says, ‘‘the mover.’’ 
When you speak of Him as ‘‘unknown’’ you grant 
‘the possibility of all that you deny. You may say 
that we do not know His attributes, in which case 
it is evident that He may be ‘‘intelligent and power- 
ful,’’ and therefore you are faulting ‘‘orthodoxy’’ on 
untenable grounds. The ‘‘orthodox,’’ who begin with 
the declaration that ‘‘God is the Creator of heaven 
and earth, of all things visible and invisible,’’ and 
possesses certain attributes, have laid a foundation 
broad enough for the fundamental doctrines of their 
religion. Your postulate of a ‘‘God unknown”’ ex- 
cludes the possibility of knowing anything about the 
‘‘origin’’ and working of the ‘‘ phenomenal universe.”’ 
You offer a process, supposed to have been observed 
in bringing the universe into being, as the cause of 
its existence. Yet you speak of the ‘‘potentiality’’ 
of God’s ‘‘idealization’’ as if you knew Him as a 
Creator of a self-created universe! 

Even if there is an ‘‘overwhelming majority’’ of 
the ‘‘intelligent people’’ who hold the doctrines which 
you set forth, the sincere belief of good men and 
women in the past and the sincere belief of a re- 
spectable minority of those still living is, I think, 


34 A GODLESS COSMOGONY 


worthy of a more respectful treatment than you have 
given them. I know you too well to imagine for a 
moment that you would deliberately pain and grieve 
them, so I beg you to revise your paper according to 
your own kindly disposition and do justice to those 
whom you may believe to be mistaken. Have they 
not as good a claim to consideration as your ‘‘over- 
whelming’’ majority? While you condemn them for 
beliefs and convictions which you hold to be un- 
founded please ask yourself what better ground you 
can offer for your own belief. At bottom you may 
claim that their belief is based on ‘‘opinion.’’ Pardon 
me, but is not yours?) Have your teachers any better 
means of knowing the ultimate truth than they whom 
you condemn? The same evidence is before both of 
you; one interprets it one way and another inter- 
prets it another way. Imagining how the ‘‘phenom- 
enal universe’’ might have come into being in a 
manner satisfactory to themselves your authorities no 
more established it as a fact that it did so come into 
being than the belief of those who hold another view. 
Please treat their belief with the: respect which is 
due your own. 

{ am somewhat puzzled to know why you daily 
offer the prayer to God which is included in your 
paper. If ‘‘the universe and all that therein is owes 
its existence to an internal, evolutionary power which 
is its own,’’ and if ‘‘the original nebula contains the 
potentiality of all human life and its whole destiny,’’ 
and if “‘from the time of his emergence out of the 
animal estate to the human man has been working 
out his own salvation, and his success has been due 


ee —— a 


} 
| 


IS MATTER ETERNAL OR CREATED? 35 


entirely to his own unaided efforts,’’ it seems to me 
quite illogical to pray to a God who, having ‘‘ideal- 
ized’’ the universe into existence, set it adrift to 
work out its own destiny. If you feel that you must 
pray at all, it seems to me that the only person to 
whom you can logically pray is yourself, because in 
you are ‘‘all potentialities of man.’’ 


Vv 
IS MATTER ETERNAL OR CREATED? 


Pardon a word about the ‘‘scientific’’ theory of 
the beginning of the ‘‘phenomenal universe’’ in a 
’ fire mist. You will recall, of course, that Heraclitus, 
a Greek philosopher (cire. 600 B. C.), postulated such 
a mist as the beginning of the world and the active 
‘principle in its organization was ‘‘becoming’’—not 
far from your ‘‘evolution,’’ perhaps. But after de- 
velopment the world returned again to its original 
condition. This, he said, had always been the law 
of the universe. It was changing from fire mist to 
the organized universe, and vice versa, and would 
continue to do so. No god originated the fire 
mist, but like all the ancient philosophers with 
whose theories I am acquainted, he held that matter 
was eternal. Then you will recall Laplace and his 
“‘vapor cloud,’’ and again the fire mist of the last 
century from which ‘‘develops,’’ or ‘‘evolves,’’ the 
‘“‘phenomenal universe.’’ This old theory assigns the 
power of ‘‘becoming’’ to the material itself, which is 


36 IS MATTER ETERNAL OR CREATED? 


eternal or without cause. Will you pardon me if I 
say that such views seem to me like those of an in- 
telligent Hottentot who should go into a factory and 
see a bale of wool or cotton pass through machinery 
and emerge as cloth, and laud the productive power 
of the machinery, ignorant of its inertia and unaware 
of the power which propels it, and knowing nothing 
of the wisdom which has so constructed it that it 
controls and forms the fiber into a woven web? You, 
however, differ from these philosophers in ascribing 
the fire mist to the ‘‘idealization’’ of God, though at 
other times it ‘‘owes its existence to an internal evo- 
lutionary power which is its own,’’ quite as Heraclitus 
may have understood it. 

May I be permitted to propose a theory which has 
occupied my fancy, now and then, for some time? 
Of course, it is only a speculation of a wild sort, 
perhaps, and not at all ‘‘scientific.’’ 

If I understand the last scientifie word about mat- 
ter it finally reduces to ‘‘ions’’—goings—manifesta- 
tions of electric force at the negative pole of the 
battery—possibly the ‘‘becoming’’ of Heraclitus. 
This force, stabilized in equilibrio, presents the phe- 
nomena of what we call ‘‘matter.’’ Now, we know 
of no source or origin of force but a personal will; 
and while we cannot conceive how God creates, have 
we not here logical ground for the Mosaic statement 
that ‘‘in the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth’’? It was the act of His personal will. 
By the same power He also sustains it in being, as 
Descartes held. From what I have seen and read 
of Egyptian work and wisdom I am ready to believe 


—— ee ee 


IS MATTER ETERNAL OR CREATED? 37 


that they may have solved some, perhaps many, of 
our deep problems, and the solution of them has been 
lost. Does Moses, who ‘‘was learned in all their 
wisdom,’’ give us the solution of one of these prob- 
lems in his account of the creation of the world? 

If you propose to appeal to any Church for the 
approval of your ‘‘scientific universal religion’’ you 
must appeal to it as a court. That Church can only 
decide whether your expressed convictions agree with 
or are contrary to the doctrines held and taught by 
the Church. They cannot be expected to issue a ‘‘new 
apology’’ for Christianity which shall answer the 
objections raised by a system of speculative philoso- 
phy that proposes to substitute a series of abstract 
terms, involving indefinable notions, for well under- 
stood and practical precepts. No man has ever been 
found equal to the task which you propose. Mce- 
Ilvaine’s ‘‘Evidences,’’ of which you speak slight- 
ingly, and other ‘‘apologies,’’ met the specific diffi- 
culties of their day—difficulties which were definite ; 
but theoretical difficulties on hypothetical foundations 
can be met only by the statement of positive truths, 
or what are held to be such, by those whom you 
challenge. May I suggest, further, that it is un- 
reasonable to fault former apologists because they 
did not answer the questions of generations yet un- 
born? 


VI 
IS CHRISTIANITY A DELUSION OR FRAUD? 


The following is your second contention: 

“The old apologetics in support of the dogma of 
Christian orthodoxy concerning the supernatural 
and unique incarnation of God in Jesus has broken 
down at every point, so that among the leading men 
of Christendom the dogma is rejected by seventy-five 
out of every hundred; and if scepticism continues to 
grow during the whole of the twentieth century as 
it is growing at its beginning, by the close, unless 
meantime a new and more effective apologetic is 
formulated, of which there is no prospect, such men 
will, with practical unanimity, abandon the whole 
orthodox system of soteriology. 

*“Except as an idealization there never has walked 
this earth a God-man, any more than a man-horse 
has galloped it. All such conceptions, including that 
of a devil-snake, which occupied a prominent place 
in orthodox theology as late as the beginning of my 
generation, are monstrous creations of the imagina- 
tions of peoples in their childhood. In view of the 
universal and horrible sufferings, extending through 
many eons, for which the devil-snake and God-man 
conceptions were responsible, of the three monstrosi- 
ties I prefer the man-horse one. It has long been 

88 


ae ee ee Se ee ae 


RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 39 


stored among the curiosities of folklore. The devil- 
snake is now in the same museum. It is high time 
that the God-man myth should be assigned to its 
rightful place in this melancholy collection.’’ 

This contention attacks the citadel of Christianity 
and demands an answer such as a short paper like 
this cannot adequately give. I propose, therefore, to 
show that men accepted the teachings and claims of 
our Lord because He gave a sufficient answer to the 
‘*questions of the human soul,’’ and this is the reason 
men give today. If it is true your contention is vain. 


Vil 


MAN’S RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENT IMPELS 
HIM TO SEEK GOD 


One of your ‘‘theses’’ surprised me not a little. You 
say that ‘‘we have in ourselves all potentialities and 
can acquire nothing from extraneous sources, and we 
advance in knowledge only by evolution,’’ i. e., I 
suppose we enrich our minds and spiritual nature 
only by unfolding the treasures already folded up in 
our being. Reflection and experience, I think, teach 
otherwise. 

All our senses work for the enriching of the mind. 
Each has its own object and furnishes its own prod- 
ucts. The eye cannot give us knowledge of sounds; 
nor can the ear distinguish color. The blind man 
who had been given a description of colors could only 
conclude that ‘‘red looked like thunder.’’ A lady 


40 RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 


who had been born blind gained her sight by means 
of a surgical operation, but she did not recognize 
her mother when she first saw her; and though she 
had handled children all her life she did not know 
a child when she saw it and only by touch did she 
discover what it was. No doubt if we were suddenly 
endowed with an additional organic sense the ma- 
terial world would present a different aspect. It is, 
I believe, much the same with what are called the 
faculties of the mind or soul; i. e., the power of the 
mind to work in different ways according to its ob- 
jects. Each one deals with its own objects in its 
own way and in its own sphere and furnishes its own 
product. You cannot substitute one faculty for an- 
other, nor can you safely undertake to abolish, nullify 
or ignore it. Your classification of men eminent as 
musicians, poets, philosophers, etc., neither of whom 
eould do another’s work, may suggest the futility of 
attempting to substitute the faculty of observation 
in the physical world, or ‘‘science’’ as you eall it, 
in the place of the religious endowment of the soul. 
We may acquire knowledge from outside. That we 
may acquire it we have our senses, and especially 
the power of speech. We establish schools, read 
books, hear discourses, engage in conversation and 
travel to distant scenes. A casual word or look makes 
an abiding impression, and the mind is never again 
what it was, nor what it would have been without the 
word or look. i 

I believe that the religious endowment is the cause 
of all human knowledge. It appears as an instinct 
at birth in filial dependence upon the parent, and it 


= 


se a 


RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 41 


produces, blindly but unerringly, the action that 
mature reason would dictate. Later on in life this 
spring of action impels to the search for other objects 
on which to fix attention until the ultimate Cause of 
being furnishes its goal. This fundamental religious 
endowment, not possessed by the animals, has its own 
special faculty which subordinates all others, as they 
awaken, to its service. It may be strong in some and 
only partially developed in others. Corporal Trim, 
in obedience to the Fifth Commandment, gave ‘‘three 
halfpence a day’’ for the support of his parents, 
though he was quite ignorant of geology or even of 
‘Jong division.’’ 

Religion of some sort is found among all people; 
for man, as ‘‘the offspring of God,’’ instinctively 
seeks the Author of his being, because he is instine- 
tively aware that his being is derived, not original. 
This religious desire is at the bottom of human in- 
vestigations, and the universe in which man finds 
himself, to whose phenomena his senses and faculties 
are adapted, presents itself as the sphere in which 
to search in order to find God. Everywhere men see 
evidences of His wisdom, power and majesty, and 
the man’s being is incaleulably enriched. Hence one 
writes: ‘‘Whither shall I go from Thy spirit: or 
whither shall I go from Thy presence? If I climb 
up into heaven, Thou art there; if I go down to hell, 
Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morn- 
ing: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; 
even there also shall Thy hand lead me; and Thy 
right hand shall hold me. If I say peradventure 
the darkness shall cover me: then shall my night 


42 RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 


turn to day. Yea, the darkness is no darkness with 
Thee, but the night is as clear as the day: the dark- 
ness and light to Thee are both alike’’ (Ps. 189: 7-12). 
Surely such a God is not unknown! But we never 
reach Him; for, as another says, ‘‘Canst thou by 
searching find out God? Canst thou find out the 
Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven: 
what canst thou do? deeper than hell (sheol) : what 
canst thou know?’’ (Job 11:7, 8.) God must, then, 
transcend this world. 

The religious impulse is the principle of the first 
voluntary action. The most ignorant man must have 
a God to whom he ascribes the mystery of life; and 
the most learned and the wisest see that the discovery 
of God is the ultimate aim of study and wisdom. 
So the universe is searched, and the ten thousand 
lines of investigation and study, sooner or later, grow 
out of the religious endowment. Men found, after 
centuries of search, that Nature, while revealing 
God’s presence and certain of His attributes, did not 
reveal Him, and they could go no further. Then our 
Lord by His teachings, works, life and finally by His 
resurrection, opened before them a greater universe, 
and lo, only an eternal life can fill the prospect up 
to the throne of God! 

If the above seems to you rhapsodical I beg you to 
turn to the archeological reports and the writings and 
remains of the oldest nations and peoples of which 
we have traces. It is due to the religions of the most 
ancient peoples that we have learned so much of 
their arts, sciences and civilization. Strike religion 
and its products out of what we find in their ruins, 


OE a 


RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 43 


and all their laws and institutions, and especially 
their arts and ‘‘science,’’ disappear. 

You speak of the early religious gropings of un- 
enlightened men as ‘‘superstitions.’’? In those super- 
stitions were all the potentialities of knowledge. You 
condemn their religion as foolish and absurd; but 
what can be expected of the inexperienced and, as 
you put it, the ‘‘undeveloped’’ man just struggling 
from the condition of the ‘‘anthropoid ape’’? His 
religion must be elementary and primitive, like every- 
thing else in his mind. But ‘‘superstition’’ witnessed 
to the religious endowment of human nature. It 
served to check brute ferocity in some degree. In 
the Dark Ages about the only restraint of the robber 
barons was the fear inspired by the superstitious 
teachings of the Church. The ‘‘go-as-you-please’’ re- 
ligion of the Germans whom you quote is about as 
effectual to prevent the efforts to bring back the 
robber baron age as would be a peacock plume to 
stop a superdreadnought. At bottom, superstition 
worked for spirituality, and a man’s religious con- 
victions made him use all his resources to express the 
value which he attached to religion. I cannot under- 
stand how a wise man can suppose that such a uni- 
versal and perpetual obsession of the human mind, 
working out in divers forms, all from one root, could 
be replaced by the speculations of any philosopher 
however learned he might be. No truly scientific man 
with such a tremendous phenomenon before him as 
the universal belief in all ages of a supernatural 
world impinging upon and penetrating this world 
could speak of it as causeless, nor of universal hu- 


44 RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 


manity as contemptible, because he did not regard 
their convictions as reasonable and ‘‘scientific.’’ 

As science advances it opens new vistas for re- 
ligion, and religion is accordingly progressive. Reve- 
lation was not made all at once, but only as men were 
able to apprehend it. Arts and sciences, as archeol- 
ogy shows, have advanced again and again to great 
perfection, only to perish and be forgotten when re- 
ligion and morality have not advanced with them. 
They cannot sustain themselves without the support 

of moral character in those whom they serve. Now 
- science does not aim to produce moral character. Re- 
ligion is needed for that. But as both science and 
religion are progressive, why substitute a progressive 
science for religion on the ground that in past gen- 
erations religion did not recognize the science of the 
twentieth century, but only that of its own day? You 
say that the Church martyred many scientific men 
who were in advance of the received science of the 
time. Was it not then at the behest of their scien- 
tifie contemporaries? The Church received the blame 
for their martyrdom, justly, I believe. She should 
not have made herself the servant of men, but only 
of her Lord and Master, who unsparingly condemned 
persecution. Let her thank scholars for all the work 
they do, as showing the wisdom and power of God, 
and use it thankfully; but let her keep out of the 
disputes which are inevitable among these ardent 
seekers after truth. 

As you see I regard religion as the mother of all 
knowledge, the inspiration to arts, science and letters, 
the stimulus to the broadest, deepest and highest 


RELIGION SEEKS KNOWLEDGE 45 


education possible. Tio keep people ignorant, that 
they may remain religious, is an utter perversion of 
religion and deprives intelligent and moral beings of 
their natural right. I know that some honest eccle- 
siastics, in view of the limited education most men 
can have and the fact that ‘‘a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing,’’ feel that a ‘‘docile ignorance 
makes for spiritual safety’’; but I do not think the 
conviction justifies them in depriving God’s people of 
any right for which He has endowed them. The 
dangers of ignorance are to be guarded against by 
giving them better education. 

Please don’t be impatient if I repeat that there 
-geems to be a lack of clear thinking in your paper. 
You say that ‘‘God’s idealization caused the existence 
of the universe by evolution, not creation.’? I do 
not understand the distinction between ‘‘evolution’’ 
and ‘‘creation’’ in this case. ‘‘Evolved’’ from what? 
If from His own blessed being why not call it ‘‘crea- 
tion’’? If from some other source you should specify 
whence. If He brought into being what did not exist 
before, I should eall it ‘‘creation’’; for to me the 
word ‘‘evolution’’ indicates a method or process of 
producing some particular thing which now exists. 
I fear that we use words, especially abstract terms, 
in different senses. To me, trying to agree with 
Plato, the ‘‘idea’’ presents a ‘‘pattern’’ and also 
imparts ‘‘character, and determines the kind of thing 
made,’’ but it has in itself no power to produce 
anything. When you say that ‘‘the divine ideal 
carries’’ in it ‘‘the potentiality of fully evolutioniz- 
ing itself into all possible forms and degrees of phys- 


46 SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 


? 


ical and spiritual life,’’? you present a theory of 
causation which I have never met before. I gather 
from it, however, that you attribute the ‘‘phenomenal 
universe’’ to the act of God. You are ‘‘orthodox’’ in 
that fundamental respect. Whether God produced 
the ‘‘phenomenal universe’’ by ‘‘idealization’’ or 
‘‘evolution,’’ or both, or by other unknown methods 
of ‘‘creation,’’ I think it is impossible for man to 
know. A man may be religiously ‘‘orthodox,’’ and if 
he ‘‘do justly, love mercy and walk humbly before 
God’’ because he believes in Him and in ‘‘Jesus 
Christ whom He has sent’’ I do not think he would 
be excommunicated even if he were so ignorant 
of astronomy as to believe that ‘‘the sun moves 
around the earth,’’ as it appears to do. But if he 
proposed to substitute such a belief for the first article 
of the Apostles’ Creed we should eall him heretical, 
irrespective of the movements of the sun. To me 
there is a certain confusion of thought in your cos- 
mological and anthropological views and their re- 
lation to religious beliefs. 


VIiil 


HOW MEN MAY OBTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF 
DIVINE TRUTH 


You say that ‘‘each representative of the race of 
man has within himself or herself all the potentiali- 
ties of the life that is here in the present, or that is 


SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 47 


to be anywhere in the future.’’? Such is your state- 
ment. 

It will be difficult to persuade thinking people that 
all the knowledge we have either of divine truth or 
of truth of any sort has been ‘‘evolved’’ from the in- 
dividual mind itself as it was originally constituted. 
As I have already said, one might as well contend 
that our knowledge of the external world is only an 
‘Coevolution’? from the mind, and that there is no 
such thing as an external world existing independent 
of us. But we know that by the faculty of perception 
we become aware of the phenomena of objects and 
the mind is enriched by the acquisition of what it 
did not possess before. Men increase knowledge by 
travel, reading and observation, as I have pointed out. 
The only limit is that we can see things only accord- 
ing to our nature and faculties, or, as the Scriptures 
state it, ‘‘according to the measure of a man.’’ But 
from the fact that, as Protagoras states it, ‘‘man is 
the measure of the universe’’ or that we can know 
things only in proportion to our power of knowing 
them, it does not follow that they are already ‘‘folded 
up,’’ so to speak, ‘‘in our mind’’ and that we only 
‘‘develop’’ them. His pregnant remark on the limi- 
tations of our knowledge and our means of knowing 
gives helpful light on the manner in which divine 
truth should be revealed to us if it is to be revealed 
at all. 

By means of what are called the moral faculties we 
have perceptions of truth, justice, goodness, and so 
forth, which we recognize as qualities in human ac- 
tions. I think it was this discovery of the absolute 


48 SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 


existence of the ‘‘universal reason,’’ or Jus gentium 
(i. e., the moral principles which lie behind all law 
and government), by Panetius, and set forth by 
Sulpicius Rufus, which revolutionized Roman law, 
about 100 B. C., and made it the beneficent founda- 
tion for the great work of the Roman Empire as the 
legal teacher of the nations. Among the preparatory 
agencies for the reception of the Gospel by the Gen- 
tiles this was not the least. The existence of these 
moral principles is independent of man’s perception 
of them. The faculty by which we discern a thing 
does not include the object to be discerned, else the 
whole physical and moral world would resemble the 
‘‘Tohu Va-Bohu”’ of the beginning of Genesis. ‘‘Tot 
homines, tot sententiae.’? Moral knowledge, like 
physical knowledge, varies—progresses and recedes— 
but the objects of knowledge may not be affected 
quantitatively or qualitatively. 

Likewise spiritual truth may be apprehended when 
it is presented to us without its existence depending 
upon our knowledge of it. We can investigate nature 
and arrive at the religion of the savage or of the 
enlightened Greek; or we may receive it from some 
accredited teacher who may have acquired it by ob- 
servation of the external world or from an investi- 
gation of the soul, its instincts, laws and hopes, fears, 
desires, etc.; or from the course of history, or from 
Reason, or from the customs of men who are often 
impelled to do things for which they can give no 
explanation. But there has never been a people who 
did not believe that divine guidance was also given 
by communication or inspiration from God or the 


SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 49 


gods. Sometimes the knowledge comes in a flash, but 
ordinarily only after deep searchings of heart. Soc- 
rates was guided and informed often, so he declared, 
by his ‘‘Demon’’ (or genius?), and I who write this 
know that on one occasion, at least, I heard a ‘‘voice’’ 
in my heart, when I was in dire perplexity, telling me 
what to do. I did not obey because it seemed ill- 
advised; and I found afterwards that there were rea- 
sons of which I then knew nothing that would have 
led me to do what the ‘‘voice’’ directed me to do, 
and I have regretted my decision ever since. The 
phenomenon was singular and impressive. While I 
use the word ‘‘heard’’ I do not claim that the com- 
munication was made through the ear; rather it was 
spirit communicating directly with spirit. I have 
since wondered whether such ‘‘voices’’ may not al- 
ways be counselling us without being distinctly ar- 
ticulate, but only by mingling with our trains of 
thought affect their color and so aim to guide us to 
wise conclusions. On special occasions, however, when 
the soul is strained to the utmost, the counsel may 
take the form of a distinct message. From that day 
I have never questioned the truth of Jeanne d’Are’s 
statement that she ‘‘ heard voices’’ which directed her. 
The visions may have been the product of a heated 
imagination, as suited the times in which she lived, 
but I accept the voices as real. I will not here press 
the Jewish prophets or the oracles, for them you 
have repudiated; but you may ask how can an ac- 
credited teacher obtain knowledge of divine truth so 
that he can announce, ‘‘Thus saith the Lord’’? 

To avoid your probable objection to an external 


50 SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 


‘‘supernatural’’ communication from on high I ask 
you to recall the manner in which Stephenson, Sir 
Isaac Newton, the poet Moore and Socrates arrived 
at the truth or knowledge with which they enriched 
the world, in mechanics, in science, in poetry and in 
divine philosophy. In these instances, as ordinarily, 
there seemed to be a particular endowment or aptitude 
for the investigations which they pursued. 

Smiles tells us that when Stephenson met obstacles 
which were apparently insuperable he would retire 
to his room, sometimes for days, and then come forth 
calm and quiet and give a few simple directions which 
showed that the problem had been solved. Sir Isaac 
Newton arrested by a thought as he was on the edge 
of his bed remained there all day intent upon the 
problem, and forgetful of hunger till all was clear 
to him. Moore tells us that when he engaged to write 
‘‘Lalla Rookh’’ he devoted himself for two full years 
to reading Eastern books and meditating upon them 
exclusively, and thus lived in the atmosphere of the 
Eastern world. Alcibiades’ account of Socrates, re- 
corded in the ‘‘Banquet of Plato,’’ tells us that the 
philosopher stood unmoved all of one day in a camp 
field, while the soldiers gathered around him, curi- 
ously gazing and joking with one another at his ab- 
straction, eating their rations in a circle of which 
he was the center, and when night came bringing 
their pallets and camping in his presence. There 
he stood, unobserving and immovable, until the sun 
arose, when he seemed to awake, gave his religious 
salute to the god of day and went to his quarters. 
This was the custom of Socrates, said his disciple, 


SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH 51 


when he sought to find that hidden wisdom which 
marked him as the ‘‘wisest of men.’’ So Archimedes 
would forget to eat his meals and required compul- 
sion to take him to the bath, and was killed by a 
soldier because, in his abstraction, he failed to say 
who he was. If it were not for your probable objec- 
tion I would like to point out the parallel between 
these men who acquired a knowledge of the truth 
in physics, mathematics, beauty and moral philosophy 
by abstracting their minds from their surroundings 
and surrendering their souls absolutely to the con- 
sideration of the matter before them, and, say, 
Ezekiel, stretched out like a dead corpse for more 
than a year, and Ezra, sitting in the Temple Court 
with rent garments and hair plucked off, mute with 
astonishment and distress through the livelong day, 
till evening came and with it the knowledge of what 
to do in the emergency; or Elijah on Carmel, or in 
the cave at Horeb when he heard the ‘‘still, small 
voice.’’? The same is true of the prophets generally ; 
and I cannot think it unreasonable to expect that as 
the men first quoted obtained the truth which they 
sought in mathematics, philosophy, and so forth, 
those who sought spiritual truth should find it also. 
Such was the method of John the Baptist, who lived 
in the desert to shut out the world and hear the voice 
of God. If we find that schools of secular learning 
enable men to obtain secular knowledge should it be 
strange that ‘‘schools of the prophets’’ enabled them 
to acquire knowledge of divine truth? A prophet 
is one who ‘‘speaks for God.’’ In so doing he may 
predict a result, or he may not; but what he learns in 


o2 THE BIBLE 


surveying the depths of the spiritual world is, if he 
is honest, just as much entitled to the claim of God’s 
truth as the pons asinorum of Archimedes. The 
proof of the truth of any deliverance of any teacher 
is, of course, judged pragmatically—‘ does it work’’? 
Now, has any one proposed a system of political 
economy, of personal or communal morality, or re- 
ligious belief, which has commended itself to so many 
people, for so long a time, because of its unspeakable 
blessings, as the Gospel, even in the low degree in 
which it is practiced? 


IX 
THE BIBLE 


And now let me say how I regard the Bible. To 
my mind it contains the greatest body of religious 
truth in the world. It claims to have been delivered 
to men ‘‘at sundry times and in divers manners by 
the prophets’’;' that is, by men who spoke for God. 
It was given in different ages, to men who lived under 
different conditions, but always in such forms that 
they to whom it was delivered could understand it. 
Sometimes its mode of speech seems extravagant. To 
us it is often archaic, like other writings of the same 
day. Sometimes it is in the rhythmical form dear 
to primitive people and those who depend on memory 
for the retention of cherished instruction or in story. 
It is in every literary form, and is often tinged with 
the glow of earnestness, enthusiasm, poetry and rhe- 


Ne == 


THE BIBLE 53 


torical figure. It is the cream of a vast literature, 
nearly all of which has perished because it became 
obsolete. During fifteen hundred years writers were 
engaged in producing and purifying it of what was 
only of temporary value and packing its treasures 
for transportation to future ages. We must there- 
fore unpack it, unwrap the archaic covering, expose 
it, study it to find the kernel of its truth and interpret 
it in terms of modern thought. The Tenth Com- 
mandment, e. g., was given to an agricultural people 
who held their land by a particular kind of title, 
and things special to their conditions are enumerated 
in it. Is it less true today that men should ‘‘not 
covet’’ because they have neither land, nor oxen, nor 
asses, nor bond servants, but stocks, bonds, factories, 
and so forth? 

Your scorn for the writer of Genesis is strongly ex- 
pressed, but I beg you to hear a word in mitigation of 
his offence. Moses probably, or, if not he, then some 
other person, wrote the Book of Genesis (for it is 
undeniable that it was written) long ago. The writer, 
I believe, incorporated in it certain divine truth, or 
what was regarded as such, which had been promul- 
gated in previous ages. Here we have an account of 
the creation of the world baldly stated as a fact, the 
beginning of the human race, ete. You fault it as 
non-correspondent with your own idea of the method 
and manner of creation; yet not one word is said on 
that point, either corresponding with or opposed to 
your view. It was not within the purview of the 
writer to give us a complete cosmology. You ridicule 
the story of the Temptation, specifying particularly 


D4: THE BIBLE 


the agency of a ‘‘talking snake’’ as the mouthpiece 
of an evil spirit whose existence and character you 
deny. For myself, I confess to great ignorance about 
the existence of beings purely good and evil in this 
world today, to say nothing of the immeasurable uni- 
verse and times past. I confess, however, with Bur- 
nett, ‘‘facile credo esse plures invisibiles quam vist- 
biles in rerum natura.’’ So did the writer of Genesis, 
I think, or the writer whose works he incorporated in 
the book. So do people generally, as you confess 
when you accuse them of superstition. Let us grant 
that they so believed. According to your statement 
the first man or the first people were ‘‘evolving’’ a 
moral or spiritual sense, and growing up from ‘‘an- 
thropoid apes’’ into human beings, but as yet with 
a very imperfect consciousness of their humanity. 
Ireneus puts it that Adam and Eve were created chil- 
dren and, of course, they behaved like children, hav- 
ing a child’s experience, or, rather, inexperience. In 
either view they were woefully ignorant. They were 
placed in ‘‘Eden,’’ the Garden of Delights. There are 
still those who speak of childhood as the Edenie age 
of life and quote: ‘‘How dear to my heart are the 
scenes of my childhood.’’ This feature, then, is true 
to nature. 

The teachings of morality in terms of the nine- 
teenth or twentieth century would have been incom- 
prehensible to such primitive people. If any truth 
was to be taught them it must be in the terms of 
what we call ‘‘folklore,’’ or ‘‘nursery tales.’’ The 
being of God, His work of creation; men’s possession 
of a higher nature than they had been conscious of 


THE BIBLE DD 


as beasts, and that by virtue of this higher nature 
they were to exercise dominion over the earth and its 
denizens; the need of self-control in order to be 
able to govern others; the internal struggle within 
themselves between the old lower self-indulgence and 
the new impulse to self-restraint; the cravings of the 
flesh and the aspirations of the spirit in conflict; the 
imperative claim of the old beastly nature to pre- 
dominate over the new moral faculties, and other 
fundamental facts and principles relating to the 
moral and spiritual life which was opening before 
them, could be presented to the earlier generations 
edifyingly and most pleasingly in parable or story, but 
— only in conerete terms suitable to their limited intelli- 
gence and understanding. I think you, with your 
‘fevolving anthropoid apes,’’ and Irenzeus, with his 
newly created children and their progeny, will own 
that this was the wise and natural method of deal- 
ing with them. And it was so simply and graphically 
done that it has taught its lesson and withstood all 
criticism, and is as true and instructive today as in 
the early ages. Am I wrong in regarding it as a 
work of consummate art—that divine perfection which 
is observable in the parables of the New Testament? 
To me it is more edifying to the budding intelligence 
struggling with an awakening consciousness which is 
trying to discover its relation to the universe than 
the general statement that there is ‘‘one God to 
whose idealization the universe owes its evolution.’’ 

As you have faulted it supremely I beg leave to 
dwell a little upon some of its features. 

One who has had a horse or a dog has, I am sure, 


56 THE BIBLE 


found that they can ‘‘speak’’ without words, English 
or others. Ausop found animals useful for instruction 
to old people as well as young. Children and animals 
are natural friends and understand each other. It 
would not seem strange to the former that the latter 
should talk; it seems strange to them that they do 
not. Again, simple and ignorant people manage 
animals with a skill not too often found with the 
sophisticated. Mules will do more for ignorant negro 
drivers than for most doctors of divinity. The In- 
dians of our Southwest lived in hidden cliff dwellings 
for security until the Spaniards brought horses to 
America and they became wild and wandered free, 
and then the timid cliff dwellers got on horseback 
and became the redoubtable Indians of the plains. 
We need not think that the horses ‘‘spoke’’ in mod- 
ern English or ancient Hebrew and told the Indians 
that they were meant to be ridden. The intelligence 
of both was sufficient for them to understand each 
other. If we were reading a tale of Grimm’s and 
found a statement like that in Genesis we would 
understand that if the woman saw the snake eating 
the ‘‘forbidden fruit’’ without dying, she might nat- 
urally think that it was not, as she supposed, ‘‘fatal’’ 
or deadly food; and she might have reflected that 
the ‘‘subtlety’’ or ‘‘wisdom’’ of the ‘‘serpent,’’ so 
much ‘‘to be desired,’’ was due to the fruit. Let me 
also suggest that there is a little touch of art in 
associating wrongdoing which is apt to have painful 
consequences with a creature for which we have a 
natural antipathy, thus uniting a pleasing temptation 
with a warning against yielding to it. The question 


THE BIBLE oT 


how the man and woman were forbidden to ‘‘eat of 
the tree,’’ lest ‘‘dying they should die,’’ need not 
trouble us much. I am told that instinct can often 
be depended on to shield creatures from danger. It 
is the Creator’s inward monitor given to them. The 
only need of the narrative is that they knew of an 
inhibition, which is the first thing that calls for the 
exercise of a child’s will-power (‘‘something inside 
of me that said ‘don’t’ when I was going to take 
the lady’s chain’’), and that was sufficient for their 
guidance. Whether an evil being used the serpent 
for his fell purpose, and, if so, whether the serpent 
was a conscious and willing agent in the deception, 
the narrative does not say, though many seem to think 
it does. 

Now, here we have a clear, logical and edifying 
account of the conditions under which men live while 
they work out their salvation and attain the end for 
which they were created. It is given in a form which, 
whether ‘‘literally’’ or parabolically true, is recog- 
nized in every other educational literature as legiti- 
mate and effective. The human mind can receive it 
in either aspect as intelligible and adequate for its 
purpose. Indeed, so perfect is it that you cannot 
help treating it as meant to be taken for a “‘literal’’ 
and not an allegorical statement of fact. And why 
should it not be? Neither you nor I can say it is 
not. The mind readily accepts it as such; just as 
certainly as it accepts its allegorical character. It is 
contrary to, or outside rather, of the experience of 
men, but there is nothing self-contradictory in it. 
You believe in Darwinism and the evolution of man 


58 THE BIBLE 


from the ‘‘anthropoid ape,’’ although in all the thou- 
sands of years of which we have records no single 
instance of a lower animal’s developing into a higher 
has been observed. Some of your postulates seem to 
me to be self-contradictory—nearly all are outside 
of human experience; yet you accept them. In a 
long and varied life I have met with so many things 
which I once thought to be ‘‘impossible’’ and ‘‘ab- 
surd’’ and ‘‘ridiculous,’’ and science is today doing 
so many things ‘‘beyond belief,’’ that I am deeply 
impressed with the limitations of my mind and under- 
standing. The impossibility of the narrative in Gen- 
esis does not impress me, and though its allegorical 
character suffices for the purpose in hand I am not 
prepared to deny its literal truth ‘‘in the dawn of 
day,’’ in spite of its being outside of the range of 
my experience. It is to my mind no harder to accept, 
even literally, than some so-called scientific statements, 
compared with which a ‘‘talking snake’’ is easy; and 
since men are to recognize a snake as an ‘‘ancestor’’ 
might they not be somewhat hospitable to him? 

I think we differ radically in regard to the spirit 
and purpose of the narrative. I gather from the tone 
used in treating of it that it impresses our eritics 
as representing that God arbitrarily imposed an un- 
necessary and capricious restriction upon Adam and 
Eve in their use of the fruit of the Garden. It was 
tantalizing to have this fair and desirable object be- 
fore them all the while and yet be forbidden to eat 
it. They should not have been subjected to such a 
severe test of their obedience. Human nature was 
not equal to the virtue of self-denial so arbitrarily 


THE BIBLE 59 


imposed upon these innocent beings; such is the ob- 
jection. 

But if it was not an arbitrary restriction against 
using what was a wholesome food, but rather a warn- 
ing against what was in ws nature injurious and 
fatal; if it taught them that in the constitution of 
the world there are things evil as well as good, and 
that the observance of law was necessary to well- 
being, or to being itself, the admonition was the act 
of love. They were free to act as they would, but 
loving care demanded that they be warned. Such 
is the reason given for the ‘‘commandments and judg- 
ments’’ in the Law of Moses. They are ‘‘for the good’’ 
of the people, ‘‘always.’’ So Pelagius taught, but 
Augustine preferred a harsher view, and from it 
came much of the repudiated theology of the later 
centuries. But if you take the biblical view the 
record of the Temptation and Fall will be seen to 
represent the position of men on earth and God’s at- 
titude towards them in quite another light. 

Here I have a little story which impressed me when 
I heard it. Last summer a city boy, Will, went up 
into the mountains of western Maryland and met a 
country boy, John. ‘‘Let’s go up on that hill,’’ said 
Will. ‘‘All right,’’? said John. When the road on 
which they were walking approached the hill it turned 
and ran parallel with it, leaving a thicket between 
the hill and the road. John turned to go down the 
road, but Will said, ‘‘Let’s go up through the bushes. ”’ 
John said, ‘‘No. If you go through the bushes you'll 
get muddy and scratched, and tear your clothes.’ 
“Oh, I ean do it,’’ said Will, and he plunged into 


60 PROPHECY 


the thicket, while John sat down and watched the 
waving tops of the bushes as Will forced his way 
through them. However, Will did not go far before 
he turned back, and John saw that his clothes were 
torn, his face scratched, and his shoes and stockings 
a mass of mud. He was magnanimous, however, and 
only said, ‘‘Can I help you in any way?’’ ‘‘No,’”’ 
said Will, shortly; and he sat down and thought. 
After a while he said, ‘‘John, you knew what kind 
of a bog that was?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ said J ohn, ‘‘and I was 
sorry to see you plunge into it.’’ ‘Yes; I know you 
told me not to go.’? After a few minutes’ reflection 
Will spoke up and said, ‘‘John, since you knew what 
kind of a hole that is, if you hadn’t told me I should 
have thought you the meanest fellow I ever met !’’ 


xX 
THE PROPHECY CONCERNING CHRIST 


It is asserted that the alleged prophecies of the 
coming of Jesus Christ as the Messiah are unfounded, 
and that in reality there are no such prophecies. Many 
of them, it is held, were merely ‘‘the political ex- 
pression of a nation’s not unnatural ambitions cen- 
tered in the coming of some great leader who should 
turn the tide of their misfortunes and avenge them 
on their triumphant enemies.’’ 

In a brief apology like this the subject cannot be 
considered at length, but I may point out that the 
author who writes the above tells us that the ‘‘Mes- 


PROPHECY 61 


sianie prediction of Vergil in the Fourth Eclogue, of 
the boy about to be born who was to restore again the 
glories of the Golden Age, is the most remarkable.’’ 
‘‘Tts close coincidence in time with the birth of Jesus 
Christ shows how general was the expectation at this 
period of the appearance of some one who would 
bring about or initiate a new cycle in the world’s 
history.’’ Tacitus, the Roman historian (Hist., v. 
13), writing of the Jewish war, tells us that ‘‘there 
was a firm persuasion that in the ancient records of 
their (the Jewish) priests was contained a predic- 
tion of how, at this very time, the East was to grow 
powerful, and rulers coming from Judea were to ac- 
quire universal empire.’’ ‘‘These mysterious prophe- 
cies had pointed to Vespasian and Titus, but the com- 
mon people, with the usual blindness of ambition, had 
interpreted these mighty destinies of themselves, and 
could not be brought even by disasters to believe the 
truth.’’ Tacitus, the Roman, believed there was such 
a prophecy. 

May it not be said in regard to the Messianic 
prophecies that their descriptions of coming glory, 
which it is said were not fulfilled by Him whose 
earthly throne was a cross, were the highest expres- 
sion of dignity and power with which the writers and 
their readers were familiar, and they used them in 
describing the Messianic kingdom; but in the un- 
paralleled claim of Him who had overcome ‘‘the last 
enemy’’ in rising from the dead into a higher life 
when He said, ‘‘ All power is given unto Me in heaven 
and in earth,’’ their inadequacy to express such do- 
minion as no man had ever thought of makes them 


62 PROPHECY 


seem inapplicable; but what the prophets uttered 
was a true prophecy, though it involved more than 
they understood. 

It is worthy of remark that the author who likens 
the prophecies concerning the Messiah to the ‘‘ambi- 
tions of a nation centered in the coming of some great 
leader who should’’ deliver them from evil recog- 
nizes that the expectation of the Jews was very wide- 
spread, and that a new cycle in the world’s history 
was actually ‘‘initiated’’ at that time. 

In regard to the Messianic prophecies, they are not 
exhausted by Isaiah’s declaration about ‘‘a virgin 
shall conceive,’’ ete., which is ordinarily attacked 
and disposed of; but there is a chain of prophecy. 
The promise is handed on from one to another. In 
the case spoken of by Isaiah it is evident from his 
language that he saw in this event one of a great 
Sequence of events which should culminate in the 
coming of some Great Person. Events which are his- 
torically separated one from another are seen in time- 
less sequence, just as in the twenty-fourth chapter of 
Matthew the end of the world concludes the prophecy 
of the destruction of Jerusalem. The questions about 
prophecy are very puzzling. On my table is a book 
which scoffs at the idea of Scripture prophecy, which 
it declares to be ‘‘utterly absurd.’’ Then it gives a 
number of wonderful prophecies generally told by 
old men and women of no education and of limited 
intelligence in regard to such important things as 
the loss of an estate, a death by accident, ete., which 
stretches over years and years until ‘‘the prophecy 
was fulfilled by interpreting some event, which else 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 63 


had been unnoticed, to fit the case.’? And these last 
are accepted as probably true prophecies! 

If our Lord had described the end of the world 
as a philosopher, like Heraclitus, He would have re- 
ceived credit for a reasonable understanding of the 
destiny of the world; but speaking of it ‘‘in proph- 
ecy’’ the prophet was mistaken, we are told. It seems 
inconsistent for a writer to repudiate the prophecy 
that at the period of the birth of Jesus Christ one 
should appear ‘‘who would bring about or initiate a 
new cycle in the world’s history,’’ and yet confess that 
it actually came to pass as had been foretold. 


XI 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 


No writings have been subjected to severer criticism 
than those of the New Testament. In weighing such 
criticism as they are subjected to in our own day, it 
is well to remember that the critics have no exclusive 
sources of information. The records and evidence 
are the same for all, and they who examine and ques- 
tion them are doing what they have a right to do; 
but their criticism is also subject to examination. 

No doubt many documents which were extant in 
the earlier ages of Christianity passed into oblivion 
when the present canon of the Scriptures had been 
established; but now that the old question is raised 
again let us hope that such documents will be recov- 
ered by scholars and archeologists in order that the 


64 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


complete history of the New Testament canon may be 
brought to light once more. As the evidence stands 
now it seems to me that we have not sufficient reason 
for rejecting the view which has been substantially 
taken during the many centuries of the past. 

I beg leave, however, to remark that among much 
scholarly work some of the criticisms which I have 
met with in certain popular books must have been 
due to carelessness or ignorance. 

No doubt the New Testament writings have been 
subject to the hazards that affect and modify all the 
work of man. They have been liable to changes by 
interpolation and excision and sometimes perhaps by 
interchanging words, phrases and sentences that mod- 
ify or vary the meaning. But all this to an extent 
far less than in other writings. Some ecclesiastical 
advantage may have been sought now and again in 
different localities, but take it all in all I believe that 
the New Testament writings have been kept freer 
from corruption than any other literature in the 
world. 

After discounting to the utmost the changes in 
the text and the conditions under which they were 
produced there remains a solid, massive witness to 
the life, work and mission of a man called Jesus 
Christ, which is so peculiar, so different from any- 
thing that had happened before or had ever been 
imagined, so astounding in its character and claims, 
and so astonishing in its results, that it is entitled 
to attention and consideration beyond any other event 
in history. Let us try to put ourselves at the begin- 
ning of the Christian era if we would study it aright. 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 65 


The New Testament deals largely with facts and 
immediate inferences from those facts. You appar- 
ently repudiate the record as a forgery principally 
because the ‘‘alleged facts’’ are incredible, since they 
are ‘‘totally different from those of ordinary life.’’ 
This incredibility cannot be due to the inconceiva- 
bility of the facts, for too many people accept them 
to warrant that objection, and the same answer must 
be made to their being self-contradictory. So it be- 
comes a question of evidence. The strongest theo- 
oretical objection cannot stand a moment against a 
well attested fact. When Stephenson said that loco- 
motives could travel fifty or a hundred miles an 
hour the united voices of the ‘‘scientific’’ men of 
his day, as well as the general belief, declared that 
experience had proved that ten or twelve miles an 
hour was the fastest that a traction vehicle could move 
with safety ; and the inventor’s friends begged him to 
limit his representations to the latter speed on pain 
of failure for his enterprise. But when the first rail- 
way train covered twenty-six miles an hour all such 
objections vanished. 

Science, like the Church, has often blundered in 
doctrinaire judgments. What evidence is sufficient 
to establish a fact is the question before juries every 
day. What suffices for one mind is insufficient for 
another. A talesman who has an invincible prejudice 
is rejected as a juror. I can only repeat that to my 
mind there is nothing inherently improbable in mir- 
acles. Given an occasion such as the New Testament 
presents and they are necessary. If our Lord had not 
‘‘done works such as no other man did’’ His authority 


66 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


might well be denied. He Himself appealed to them 
to prove His authority. Such at least is the record. 
It is illogical to condemn the record because it de- 
clares that He did what could be justly demanded in 
the case presented. However, I think I have written 
on this point in the earlier part of this sketchy paper. 

The parthenogenesis is objected to, although it is 
granted that it is not unknown because it is the 
method of reproduction in the amceba and primitive 
forms of life. Now, on the representation of the New 
Testament that our Lord came to redeem the world 
in tts totality (Rom. 8:18), it seems to me that He 
might well become united to it physically by the 
processes of primitive production and thus make a 
beginning for a new order of sentient beings by in- 
corporating a new and higher life in that central 
creature in whom are united all elements of terrestrial 
being, physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual, with 
which we are acquainted. You grant that in many 
places in previous ages the propriety of such an in- 
carnation had been widely recognized by intelligent 
people for some great teacher come from God. This 
seems to you an objection to the statement of the 
Gospels. Tio me the judgment of so many deep think- 
ers as to what was to be expected in such a ease 
seems to strengthen instead of weakening the state- 
ment. 

Jesus could hardly have been the ‘‘product of His 
age,’’ as were Pericles and other famous men. No 
period in ancient history is better known to us than 
that in which you grant that He lived, if He lived at 
all. Neither Roman, Greek nor Jewish life could 


OO a 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 67 


have produced such a One. The Darwinian theory 
cannot account for the production of such a being. 
Perhaps the principles of Mendelism may be sugges- 
tive here. If I understand him, he would say that 
there were, there must be, another than ordinary 
human nature in such a case. His experiments, as 
you know, have largely upset certain of Darwin’s 
claims, especially those of the ‘‘Origin of Species.’’ 

It is impossible to consider this question fairly 
apart from the rest of the records in which it is 
found. These records contain a long series of events 
which are frankly and avowedly outside of the ordi- 
nary, and taken together they form a harmonious 
whole. They relate that God finished His creation 
by ‘‘breathing into the nostrils’’ of the last creature 
which He made of ‘‘the dust of the ground’’ the 
breath of a higher life than that of other animals, and 
he became a man. By virtue of this divine gift the 
man was fitted for a superior condition in the world. 
From him sprang the human race. This race, al- 
though its beginning was lowly, was elevated in the 
scale of being by the endowment of a spiritual life 
and the world could not satisfy its spiritual desires. 
The records further contain an account of the ful- 
fillment of a long promised divine intervention for 
the elevation of the race of men above the present 
plane of existence by enriching human nature with a 
new endowment of spiritual life. Now, no event in 
a series of events can be fully understood until it is 
studied in its relation to the conclusion. In the case 
before us the last event was the resurrection of Jesus 
from the dead. This was preached by the Apostles 


68 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


as the ground of faith in Him. This event was anoma- 
lous and unique. It raised man above mortality. But 
He was not an ordinary natural man, for He had 
lived a sinless and perfect life. Such a life was 
unexampled. It had been filled with divine teach- 
ings and revelations such as no man had ever thought 
of, which were manifestly true and as manifestly 
appertained to a life superior to any known in this 
world. His action and works corresponded with His 
teachings. They also prove His possession of super- 
human power. That such a life should have a con- 
summation different from ordinary lives commends 
itself to our sense of propriety. Now what was the 
origin of such a being? One who was physically a 
man, but morally and spiritually a higher being? He 
could not have been begotten of the old human stock 
which had been corrupt in body, heart and will for 
untold ages, any more than man was begotten nat- 
urally of an animal. St. John, who had attained a 
ripe understanding of the marvellous intervention of 
the ever-loving Father of the spirits of all flesh for 
the restoration and perfection of His erring and dying 
children, tells us that Jesus was ‘‘the word of God 
made flesh’’ and that He came unto His own world 
which He had created, and though ‘‘the world re- 
ceived Him not,’’ yet ‘‘as many as received Him to 
them He gave power to become the sons of God, which 
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God.’’ The Holy Spirit 
by which He was begotten into the world will make 
those who receive Him ‘‘children of the resurrection.’’ 
Christ is presented as the new Adam of a more highly 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 69 


spiritualized race of men. We have thus a harmoni- 
ous whole, and it seems to me that all parts of the 
record stand on the same footing. 

I may point out that there are men who hold that 
our Lord came into the world by natural generation 
and yet refuse to deny His divine nature because, 
according to the New Testament, the Holy Ghost, 
by whom He became incarnate, is the ‘‘giver of life.’’ 
You may not differ from them as much as from the 
‘“orthodox,’’ and your contention that His character 
was ‘‘evolved,’’ and therefore originally in His per- 
son as much as Shakespeare’s was in his person, will 
not differ essentially from their view. I think, how- 
ever, we find no such native power of ‘“‘evolution’’ to 
perfection in ourselves, as many seem to think we 
have. 


The result of much of ‘‘historie criticism’’ as it 
has been popularized, if it be successful, will be the 
banishment from the soul of man of the authority 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence the attacks upon 
the New Testament claim particular attention. 

The following is among the statements made by a 
popular critic of Christianity: ‘‘Of late years the 
tendency has been to rely for support of the doctrines 
of the Second Coming, the Resurrection and the Judg- 
ment, on the claim that the New Testament contains 
supernatural revelations, and that its representations 
are of divine authority.’’ The claim rests upon the 
passages which contain accounts of the words and 
acts of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, 
the parables and the miracles. ‘‘This,’’ we are told, 


70 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


‘‘is to lean on broken reeds.’’ ‘‘Many of the ablest 
critics are contending that the New Testament does 
not contain a single genuine and authentic statement 
of so much as one word or act of Jesus, or even a 
single event in His life.’’ 

‘‘Tf, on the one hand, it is true that the majority 
of outstanding critics do not go so far as this with 
their denials of the alleged sayings and doings of 
Jesus, on the other hand it is true that some among 
them go further, even to the point of denying His 
historicity altogether, and that there is practical 
unanimity in the conclusion that the unquestionable 
data are quite insufficient for a complete biography 
and therefore is utterly inadequate as a basis for the 
critical articles of the Catholic creeds and Protestant 
confessions of Christian orthodoxy.’’ 

This statement calls for some examination of the 
criticisms which it is claimed have wrought such 
havoc. Here I find the usual difficulty of divided 
counsels. There is no agreement among the critics 
as to the manner of abolishing the evidence of ‘‘the 
things most surely believed among us.’’ One popular 
writer who has a dashing, confident and decisive man- 
ner of stating objections and disposing of obstacles 
will probably serve as well as another, and some of 
his criticisms may be briefly examined. 

His first objection is that ‘‘leaving out of account 
the Bible record we have no proof positive that Jesus 
Christ ever lived, at least at the date given in the 
Gospel story.’’ This is regarded as rendering His 
existence doubtful because Roman officials were re- 
quired to report to Rome all important events that 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 71 


took place. Again, Jewish authors of the period, 
like Philo and Josephus, who wrote of events at 
that time, seem to have been ignorant of our Lord’s 
existence. 

It is true, he grants, that a passage in the Annals of 
Tacitus speaks of Jesus Christ as ‘‘crucified under 
Pontius Pilate’’ during the reign of Tiberius; but this 
our author declares a forgery, since the Latin is 
incorrect. A comparison of the passage with others, 
however, shows repeated examples of precisely the 
same phraseology with only the necessary change of 
a proper name. A second verbal criticism of the same 
sort is cancelled in the same way. A reference to our 
Lord as ‘‘Chrestus’’ instead of ‘‘Christus,’’ by Sue- 
tonius, is regarded as authentic; only it relates to 
another Mahdi who enjoyed a brief vogue at the time. 
Further information about this Mahdi is withheld. 
So, on the whole, this example of verbal criticism 
seems inadvertent or to lack force. 

In another connection our author answers his own 
eritictsm, based on the assumed absence of any notice 
of our Lord in the official reports of Roman officials. 
‘He says that if Jesus Christ ever existed, ‘‘His life, 
His mission, His death, in short, all the incidents of 
His career, produced so little effect upon His contem- 
poraries that historical allusion to Him and His fol- 
lowers was deemed unnecessary.’’ 

Now it seems only fair to seek information in re- 
gard te any historic subject in the literature which 
treats of it. This we do in regard to Socrates, the 
most conspicuous of Greek moral philosophers. We 
do not question his existence because Thucydides, the 


12 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


historian of the Peloponnesian war, who gives the 
events of the war in great detail for nearly eighteen 
years, and naturally very intimate accounts of what 
was doing in Athens at the very time that Socrates 
was the best known teacher in the Agora, does not 
mention him at all. It is true that a comedian, Aris- 
tophanes, lampooned him in one of his plays, but no 
man would recognize in that caricature the revered 
philosopher. So we have something corresponding 
with what is charged as a ‘‘grievous defect’’ in early 
Christian evidences though here it is no defect 
at all, as the existence and teachings of Socrates are 
not questioned. 

We know Socrates from the literature relating to 
him. In the same manner we learn of Jesus from 
the New Testament. I beg leave also to point out 
another correspondence between the Gospel records 
of Jesus and the record in regard to the philosopher. 
A contrast is presented between the Gospel according 
to St. Mark and the Gospel according to St. John. 
The former is, I believe, rightly held to be earlier. 
But the difference, it is claimed, is so marked that 
they cannot appertain to the same person. The lat- 
ter portrays a being who ‘‘cannot be described in 
terms of ordinary humanity.’’ But I venture to think 
that the Socrates of Xenophon and the Socrates of 
Plato are not far from being as different as the 
‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God,’’ of whom St. Mark 
speaks, and ‘‘the Word made flesh,’’ of whom St. 
John wrote. 

Those who remember Mr. Lincoln as he went about 
the streets of Washington fifty years ago, a tall, 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 73 


awkward figure, in a short gray coat, with his hands 
thrust into its pockets—who was not highly rated by 
many statesmen, placemen and experienced politi- 
cians, and who quite failed to meet the approval of 
people of social claims and pretensions—and then 
turn to the majestic historical figure of the Great 
Liberator as he now appears in history, fifty years 
after, can well understand how the Socrates of Xeno- 
phon and Plato are one, and that ‘‘Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God’’ of St. Mark’s Gospel is the same who 
appears in the Gospel according to St. John, written 
two generations later, when the person, the character 
and the work of Jesus were manifested in thousands 
of saintly lives, and the wonder of His nature, 
life and mission bowed thousands of heads in wor- 
ship. 

While dealing with the fact that no truly great 
life attains its due proportions in its own generation 
it may be permitted to speak of a matter germane 
to this. 

Objection is made to the authenticity and trust- 
worthiness of the New Testament records on the 
ground that ‘‘ Jesus wrote nothing’”’ and the records 
of Him are ‘‘mere traditions which are notoriously 
unreliable.’? One who has been in the East and the 
near-East will hardly stress this objection. From 
time immemorial instruction has been and is given 
verbally. In an Eastern university I have seen the 
master or sheik—president or professor, we would 
say—standing before his pupils and simply talking 
to them. They had no pencil or tablets to take notes 
and depended on memory alone to retain the instruc- 


74 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


tion. The extent to which the memory may be culti- 
vated may be gathered from the following extract 
from a paper on El Ashar University, at Cairo, in 
the New York Times of February 7, 1915: 

‘Tn 1910, 5,565 students in El Ashar University 
could recite the whole Koran; 4,076 could recite three- 
fourths of it; 5,355 one-half; 9,145 could recite from 
memory one-fourth or over.’’ 

When, therefore, the evangelists undertook to write 
out what ‘‘things they had seen and heard,’’ and the 
things ‘‘delivered by those who from the beginning 
were eye-witnesses and ministers of the World,’’ their 
material was at hand and their authorities could 
be trusted. It is pretty well established that some of 
the Gospels were in being at a time not longer after 
the ascension of Christ than the present day from 
Mr. Linecoln’s death. St. Mark’s Gospel was extant 
probably not more than twenty-five years after the 
ascension. We are yet gathering Lincolniana, or 
items about Lincoln, incidents in his life not yet 
recorded and the whole variety of occurrences em- 
braced in a lifetime. 

It is not strange that there should be many things 
common to all the synopties, and many special to 
each. The particular object in view would determine 
the choice of the material of each evangelist. In a 
busy life of at least three years we cannot doubt that 
many similar things occurred, and the supposed iden- 
tity of incidents of the same general character but 
different in detail is questionable. We have evidence 
also that some, perhaps many, things had been re- 
duced to writing at a very early day for communica- 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 75 


tion to those who were absent but eager to know about 
the prophet of Nazareth. 

When we recall that nothing of Buddha’s was 
written for over four hundred years after the sage 
died, and the same is apparently true about Zoroaster 
and others who are brought forward as the peers or 
teachers of Christ, and whose teachings are accepted 
as authentic, we feel that such discrimination is un- 
fair. A mere statement of the case is probably 
enough. 

There are many inconsistencies and minor difficul- 
ties alleged, but they are only such as may be 
brought against historic documents generally, and 
often remind one of the ‘‘ Historic Doubts’’ of Arch- 
bishop Whately when he ‘‘proved”’ that no such man 
as Napoleon Bonaparte had ever lived! 

The four Gospels furnish an example of the man- 
ner in which a great revolutionary event is generally 
made known and established. There is first the gen- 
eral news, or proclamation, as by a herald, St. Mark, 
who spreads the Good News; then follows the careful 
reporter, St. Luke (see the preface to his Gospel) ; 
then we have the biographical historian, St. Matthew; 
and finally the seer and sage, St. John, or ‘‘ John the 
Elder,’’ if you will, whose illuminated understand- 
ing apprehends (John 20:31) and presents fully the 
nature and meaning of the marvel, and draws the 
conclusions which in this case have changed the 
thought of the world. 

The critics question not only the truth of Scrip- 
ture statements but also the authenticity of the docu- 
ments. They doubt our having ‘‘a single word ever 


76 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


uttered by Jesus.’’ Now, a good man’s convictions, 
or his ‘‘inner consciousness,’’ is not evidence received 
in a court, and would not be trusted as a fair criterion 
of writings which claim to be and have been accepted 
as historical for nearly two thousand years. From 
the first they have been carefully scrutinized by hos- 
tile critics and their text more carefully guarded 
than any others in the world of letters. In almost the 
same generation as the reputed authors we find quo- 
tations made from them, and they bear out the pres- 
ent text with fewer variations than are found in 
quotations from any other ancient writings extant. 
We have evidence that at a very early day copies 
were multiplied and spread throughout the Roman 
Empire and beyond it. Efforts at: interpellation and 
corruptions of the text in any one place were at once 
detected and condemned by comparison with the 
texts in other places. Let us consider one or two 
efforts to effect changes. 

The effort of Ireneus (cire. A. D. 180) to change 
the text of Acts 20:17, in order to sustain his con- 
tention that the Apostles appointed bishops to be 
their successors, was unanimously rejected, although 
the strong interest of ambition, armed with ecclesias- 
tical power, was invoked in its behalf. The declara- 
tion in regard to the three heavenly witnesses, in 
the First Epistle of St. John, is known to be an 
interpellation because it is omitted from some lines 
of manuscripts (one example of which is in Trinity 
College Library), and especially from the great 
Vatican manuscript. Its injection into the text from 
the margin is easily traced. Even the value of this 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 17 


interpellation in the Trinitarian controversy which 
shook the world in A. D. 325, with the entire hierarchy 
and the empire behind the doctrine which the inter- 
pellation sustained, did not suffice to have it finally 
received as authentic. It is not difficult to be sceptical 
about a thing one does not like, yet the rules of evi- 
dence generally prevail with a man because he may 
require their backing to maintain his own position. 
Even if ‘‘seventy-five per cent of scholars’’ and ‘‘four- 
fifths of men in Christendom”’ reject the Gospels as 
fraudulent or untrustworthy today because of their 
contents, it does not impair the evidence of their 
authenticity; i. e., that they were written by those 
whose names they bear. The contention of a German 
critic in my boyhood, that the ‘‘Tliad’’ was not writ- 
ten by Homer but, as Kingsley wittily put it, “‘by 
another man of the same name, who lived at the same 
time and place,’’ has neither changed the value of 
the ‘‘Iliad’’ nor diminished the fame of Homer. 

I believe it is acknowledged that the Gospels bear 
on their face convincing evidence of the sincerity of 
the writers. They believed that what they wrote was 
true. Objection to them must come, it seems to me, 
from some source other than historical; possibly from 
the mental or moral constitution of the objector. In 
that case no answer can be made. Or it may come 
from the overpowering influence of some strong or 
skilful opponent who takes captive a man’s under- 
standing and parades him under his banner for a 
time. In that case we must wait for the hour of 
release and the return to that freedom of mind which 
will permit him to take his own point of view. Now, 


18 THE NEW TESTAMENT 


it may be observed that the evangelists understood 
that they were writing unusual things, things which 
called for a change in the ordinary course of the his- 
tory of the world, and they did not flinch from it, 
although no one claims for them the position of a 
Cesar, or Cicero, or Pericles. They are known to 
have been men the least likely to aspire to such a 
tremendous undertaking. Where did they find the 
inspiration and boldness to undertake such an enter- 
prise? Their own story was that ‘‘they could not but 
speak of the things they had heard and seen.’’ Nor 
could any man have kept silence if he had been in the 
position they assert that they were in. 

Pardon a word or two more about what they have 
written. It is well known that a thing cannot be 
regarded as ‘‘impossible’’ because it is outside of ex- 
perience, but only because it is self-contradictory. 
‘*A thing cannot exist and not exist at the same time.’’ 
‘‘A whole cannot be greater or less than the sum of 
its parts.’’ But there is nothing inherently impos- 
sible in the alleged facts of the Gospel. The mind 
can accept them if the evidence is sufficient. But, I 
repeat, such a statement as this, ‘‘ According to the 
true cosmogony the universe and all that therein is 
owes its existence to an internal evolutionary power 
which is its own,’’ is at once rejected as impossible 
because it is self-contradictory. ‘‘Ex nihilo nihil fit,’’ 
says Lucretius. What does not exist can produce 
nothing. Such statements have not, I think, been 
well considered. I have no wish to eavil, and so 
have not attempted to specify many things which 
seem contrary to sound reason as I understand it, 


THE NEW TESTAMENT 79 


but no statement in the Gospels can be quite so in- 
eredible as the above. 

It is to be regretted that the repudiation of what 
are called ‘‘unverified traditions’’ do not specify the 
authorities who ‘‘maintain that the miracle stories in 
the New Testament, upon which the chief dogmas of 
Christianity rest, are so many traditional myths or 
legends, that is to say, none of them are authentic his- 
tory,’’ for under such a general and sweeping assertion 
it is impossible to examine the authorities. In certain 
remarks on Professor Sanday’s ‘‘Life of Christ in Re- 
cent Research’’ it is noticed that he does not ‘‘recom- 
mend a single article of the dogmatism on the ground 
of the scriptural representations concerning mir- 
acles.’? This is like Mr. Beecher’s ‘‘twenty feet of 
rope in thirty feet of water: good as far as it goes,”’ 
but it does not touch bottom, or justify the conclusion 
that he ‘‘has abandoned traditional evidence for the 
credibility of any of the claims made on behalf of 
orthodox Christianity.’’ Then, again, the statement 
that ‘‘not a great name among scientific critics would 
contend that the New Testament or any of the literary 
remains of primitive Christianity contains an account 
of these and other miraculous occurrences which can 
properly be regarded as having the character of his- 
torical narratives’’ seems to imply that such ac- 
ceptance would impeach their reputation as critics. 
Now, as I said at the beginning of this paper, during 
the past few years I have had occasion to examine 
every writing of the early years of Christian litera- 
ture up to A. D. 200 plus, and I beg to remind you 
that Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch and Papias 


80 CHRIST CAME TO FULFIL 


of Hierapolis respectively think that the Resurrection, 
Parthenogenesis and the Gospels of St. Mark and St. 
Matthew are historical, and they say so just at the 
end of the first century. 

The general contention that ‘‘there is comparatively 
little of human history about the Jesus of orthodox 
dogmas’’ may be correct, if you will designate the 
‘*orthodox dogmas,’’ otherwise it must be regarded as 
‘‘a flourish of rhetoric.’’ The further statement that 
‘‘many of the ablest critics are contending that the 
New Testament does not contain a single genuine and 
authentic statement of so much as one word or act 
of Jesus, or even of a single event in His life,’’ and 
other like statements may well cause lovers of ‘‘the 
classies’’ to tremble for their treasures if they be- 
lieve ‘‘the erities,’’ since no other writings come down 
to us so well attested as those of the New Testa- 
ment. My impression is that some men put such 
confidence in their ‘‘authorities’’ that without their 
readers perceiving it, they have ‘‘proved too much.’’ 
All of us thank these scholars for their labors and 
counsels, but we cannot accept them offhand as a 
final authority where a hostile animus is manifest. 


XII 
CHRIST CAME TO FULFIL 
Your second major propesition condemns the 


Gospel as a fond invention, a delusion, or a fraud. 
To this, which I regard as fatal to your remaining a 


CHRIST CAME TO FULFIL 81 


member of any Christian Church, I turn with many 
misgivings as to my ability to champion a cause of 
such indescribable importance. My own convictions, 
no doubt, will prevent my statements being of a 
character to appeal to you. Much that I say will 
seem irrelevant or to lack force. I can only ask that 
I may set over against your views those which I hold, 
discarding much which you have incorporated in your 
paper as irrelevant. 

First, I wish to say that your denial that our 
Lord’s work and teachings are unrelated to those of 
any other religious teachings is, I believe, well founded ; 
but your supposition that Christians or the Church 
claim a solitary uniqueness for them on that ground 
I think to be an error. No such attitude of unrelation 
is taken by our Lord. On the contrary, He says dis- 
tinctly that He came to ‘‘fulfil’’—fill full—complete 
what was imperfect or only partially done. All nat- 
ural religion was imperfect, as its devotees confessed. 
Of course, all peoples had a religion of some kind, for 
in God men ‘‘live and move and have their being.”’ 
The universe bears the impress of His hand and they 
are sustained in existence by Him from moment to 
moment. As Napoleon said: ‘‘Religion is a principle 
that cannot be eradicated from the human heart.’’ 
Such is the doctrine of the Bible. ‘‘God has never 
left Himself without witness,’’ and ‘‘all who fear 
Him and work righteousness are accepted with Him.”’ 
But there was a general acknowledgment that na- 
ture’s teachings about God, which you propose to 
return to (for your foundation of a Universal Re- 
ligion is Natural Religion and is a retrogression from 


82 CHRIST CAME TO FULFIL 


A. D. to B. C.), were only partial and unsatisfactory. 
The great questions of the Whence and the Whither 


of man— 


“‘The eternal question of what life was, 
And why we were there, and by whose strange laws 
That which mattered most could not be,’’ 


received no clear answer from nature. ‘‘God was not 
known.’’ Even the Jew looked forward to a more 
complete revelation. Therefore you are right in say- 
ing that ‘‘some of the doctrines and precepts and reve- 
lations of Jesus Christ’? were penumbrated, hinted at 
or stated, one way or another, by what men had learned 
by instinct, by observation and reflection, by reason 
and from teachers. By these means the way had been 
opened for the reception of the Good News when they 
heard it. Justin Martyr, who was a philosopher, 
tells us that he had thus been prepared for his con- 
version to Christianity. He and others tell us that 
Socrates and Heraclitus and many others were ‘‘nat- 
urally Christians.’’ In our Lord’s life, works and 
teachings men found the completion of what they 
had already learned partially, and they found satis- 
factory answers to the question of their souls. Our 
Lord explained to them the enigmas of existence and 
destiny. 

It is to me a strong argument for the truth of the 
Gospel that it gathers up, explains, interprets, sancti- 
fies and completes the teachings about God which men 
had learned from nature and other sources, including 
in nature, as the Greeks did, man and the human 
soul. 


CHRIST CAME TO FULFIL 83 


Is there any other teacher who was so absolutely 
free from the limitations of race, time and place— 
whose teachings were equally vital and suitable to 
the simple life in Judea and the complex life of to- 
day? His message has no Jewish characteristics in 
form or substance that make it parochial. It has the 
universality which marks the message of the Father 
of the human race. Personal holiness must be united 
with love for all the children of men—as ‘‘God is 
loving to every man,’’ so every man must ‘‘love his 
brother also.’’ This is our Lord’s message to all 
mankind through all generations. Is this true of 
any sage, prophet, lawgiver, oracle or teacher? He 
came to fulfil, complete the incomplete, perfect the 
imperfect work of those who came before Him. 

All other religions were religions of fear. God was 
an object of dread. Perhaps an exception will be 
demanded for the Greeks, whose festivals, songs and 
poetry are constantly hymning the glories and beau- 
ties of nature. But underneath all this was the ‘‘un- 
known God’’ who is brought out of darkness in the 
terrible tragedies which reveal a pitiless power and 
merciless fate as the ultimate expression of the divine. 

Compare this with the revelation of God as given 
by Jesus Christ who came to ‘‘fulfil,’’ to correct what 
was erroneous, complete what was incomplete, perfect 
what was imperfect, for universal man to the end 
of the ages. His disciples said to Him, ‘‘Lord, teach 
us to pray.’’ How shall men approach God to be 
acceptable to Him? And Jesus said, ‘‘When ye pray, 
say: ‘Our Father.’’’ The attitude of God towards 
you is that which you bear to your little darling, 


84 NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


the joy and delight of your life. ‘Our Father which 
art in heaven.’’ In His great love for men only the 
glory, beauty and blessedness of heaven imparted to 
His children will satisfy His love. 


XIII 
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


The word ‘‘supernatural,’’ which seems to be of- 
fensive to you, is a flexible term. It seems to be 
generally applied to what a man cannot account for in 
his understanding of nature and its ordinary opera- 
tions. What is ‘‘supernatural’’ in one generation is 
often called ‘‘natural’’ in another generation. The 
dividing line between them is not fixed. Doctor Les- 
ter admits that certain of our Lord’s ‘‘miracles’’ 
were actually performed, but he denies their miracu- 
lous character because he says they are within the 
realm of human power as it is manifested today by a 
certain few who possess ‘‘psychic force’’ in an un-. 
usual degree. I do not care to press this explanation, 
but prefer to point out that there can be nothing 
‘“supernatural’’ to God—whose existence you grant, 
but who you say is ‘‘unknown and unknowable’’; nor 
to Jesus Christ, if He is the Son of God. Our Lord in 
His perfect manhood (or, as one critic characterizes 
Him, ‘‘the great example of humanity made perfect’’) 
showed that man is potentially endowed with more 
power in the world than he has been able to exercise. 
As Perfect Man, He used it for His purpose. He 


NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 89 


not only revealed His Father to man, He also revealed 
man to himself. Miracles were as natural to Him as 
His carpenter’s work had been. They are to be re- 
garded not as contrary to the laws of nature but as 
an extension of man’s power beyond ordinary limits 
and, so far as we know, quite in accordance with the 
laws of nature. Such power might well be exercised 
by one who was a perfect man. With the power there 
must also be the wisdom and disposition to use it 
right for the benefit of men and the glory of God. 
This must be the condition of its exercise; for noth- 
ing could be more disastrous than to give the power 
of working miracles into the hands of an ignorant 
or vicious man. But given a perfect man, as our 
Lord is portrayed and declared to be, and miracles 
are not supernatural to Him. They are evidence to 
others that He is perfect in God’s sight. That is, 
on the New Testament portrayal of Jesus Christ, He 
was a perfect human being, a perfect man, and exer- 
cised such dominion over the earth as a perfect man 
would. 

Your objection that our Lord was a ‘‘natural man’”’ 
and did things ‘‘naturally as a man’’ is the strongest 
evidence adducible of His oneness with humanity; 
but the features of His life and ministry which ex- 
hibit a perfection that has no parallel in any other 
human life cause Him to stand out as the supreme 
authority in all matters which engage men’s atten- 
tion. If He had done things in a ‘‘supernatural’’ 
way, standing apart from other men as altogether un- 
related to them, His teachings and revelations would 
have had no such value to men as they have had 


86 NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


through all the ages since He came; and if they had 
not transcended those of other men in self-evident 
truth which men recognized as divine He would never 
have been proclaimed as ‘‘the Light of the World,”’ 
as it is incontestable that He is proclaimed by multi- 
tudes of intelligent people. It seems to follow that 
while ‘‘He did things as a man’’ and ‘‘was a man,”’ 
this fact does not exhaust His character or His nature. 
The question naturally arises, ‘‘Whence hath this 
man this wisdom, and these mighty words?’’ (Matt. 
13:54. ) It will be observed that it was His man- 
hood, which you press so strongly, that was mani- 
fested, perfectly naturally, in a way that seemed to 
suggest a wisdom and power in Him that was never 
known to exist in other men, but was always ascribed 
to superhuman beings. In His case what we call 
the natural ran up into the supernatural, and much 
of His revelation of divine truth had its root, or be- 
ginning, in the familiar facts of life, as we find in 
the case of forgiveness, atonement, vicarious suffer- 
ing and the sacraments. The familiar facts of life 
interpret for us our Lord’s teachings in regard to 
these great subjects. 

It seemed clear that He was possessed of a spirit 
superior to other men. It was recognized among 
ancient peoples that a divine Spirit could operate 
through a person to accomplish certain purposes 
without impairing the manhood (vide the ‘‘Demon’’ 
of Socrates), and the presence of such a Spirit was 
predicated of Jesus. His foes attributed what He 
did to an evil spirit, but His life and work refuted 
the charge. It is clear, however, that an endowment 


NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 87 


was attributed to Him, different from any which men 
had known or heard of, and it was recognized as of 
a heavenly nature. Moreover, it was native to Him, 
as much a part of Himself as His manhood, for it 
was always present and no man could ‘‘convict Him 
of sin.’’ It was this feature of His life, this perfec- 
tion of manhood, which led inevitably to His identifi- 
cation with God, who is the only perfect Being. As 
you say, ‘‘His perfection was in His nature.’’ Jesus 
was the perfect man. 

Now here we have a very serious question, and 
though you repudiate the Gospels and charge that 
they are ‘‘idealizations’’ of Christ, you do not dispose 
of it. Either the evangelists recorded His life ac- 
curately and it is found to be a perfect and a sinless 
life, or they imagined and described a perfect human 
life and attributed it to Him. This last supposition 
involves difficulties greater than the first. It is 
inconceivable that men who are aware that they can- 
not frame a perfect ideal of life, or, if you prefer it, 
an ideal of a perfect life, should have depicted such a 
life if it had not been presented to them. The wisest 
of the philosophers never attempted to present such 
an ideal, and the wiser they were the less likely 
were they to attempt it. They were contented to 
show that one thing was better than another. Hooker 
challenged the world to produce one perfect human 
action—perfect in origin, purpose, motive, perform- 
ance and results—and none has ever been presented. 
But all ages subsequent to the publication of the 
Gospels have proclaimed the life of Jesus to have 
been a perfect life. It has never been successfully 


88 NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


faulted. The Jews, indeed, slew Him, but it was 
not for anything which subsequent ages regarded as 
faulty, but for the maintenance of their privileges 
and power which His influence threatened to destroy. 
When you stress His perfect manhood you are fol- 
lowing the trail which led men to the throne of God. 
When it came before them in a perfection that is 
absolute its true character and significance appeared. 
Its harmony and beauty were irresistibly attractive. 
A perfect man! Perfect to the Russian, French- 
man, German and Negro of today, as it was to the 
Roman, the Greek, the Barbarian of nineteen hundred 
years ago, and as it is proving to be to the Japanese, 
Chinaman and East Indian in days to come—the per- 
fect man for universal imitation! Why was He the 
exception? Can any other reason be assigned than 
that He was the incarnation of the Spirit which had 
ereated man in the image of God—the anti-typical 
man who is in the bosom of the Father of the human 
race? Perfect manhood ealls for actions and utter- 
ances which become the Son of God. 

‘“No man hath seen God at any time,’’ He said. Is 
it true? ‘‘The only begotten Son who is in the bosom 
of the Father, He hath revealed Him.’’ Is it true? 
Men who were seekers after God believed it. ‘‘He 
who hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,’’ namely 
**God,’’ the ‘‘Spirit’’ who is by nature invisible but 
was ‘‘manifested’’ in the ‘‘flesh,’’ that is, through 
man, otherwise the revelation of God could not be 
apprehended and understood. Superhuman works 
were required to prove that He possessed superhuman 
knowledge and power. They must be of a kind to man- 


NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 89 


ifest the knowledge, wisdom and love which men recog- 
nized as divine, and such as they could judge of. 
He showed Himself to be a divine man by doing 
divine works as a man; such works as men had a 
right to demand in justification of His claims. The 
evidence for a miracle is the same as for any other 
event. To deny their actuality when they meet the 
demands of the situation, because if they were true 
He must have been more than a man, is quite illogical. 
It was a new revelation, the beginning of new things 
upon the earth for the race of man which was to be 
endowed with ‘‘a more abundant life.’’ 

It is to be remembered that these works were done 
not for that generation alone but, like His teaching, 
with which they are associated, for subsequent gen- 
erations as well. They are His credentials to all 
whom He came to bless. His works corresponded with 
and illustrated the words. They were beneficial works, 
and may be arranged in a progressive order. Some 
cures were not unlike what people of great psychic 
force claim to do today. The power of certain peo- 
ple with the insane is very marked. We observe in 
connection with this that He, like them, perceived on 
more than one occasion that ‘‘virtue had gone out 
of Him.’’ The evangelist St. Luke, who was a physi- 
cian, notes this as a common feature of certain mir- 
acles (8:46). They advance from what men are 
always accomplishing by the adaptations of the forces 
of nature to those which it is confessed only God 
can do. The divine power, however, is shown, in 
that He did directly what men accomplished by the 
laws of nature. Men had grown the five barley loaves 


90 NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


by plowing, sowing and reaping. He increased them 
at His will. These two forces, human and divine, 
appear in this work; but where the divine begins and 
the human ends is imperceptible. They are one in 
His hands. Then finally His power is shown in 
works entirely transcending human efforts and we 
recognize the worker as divine. 

Again, His teaching revealed the principles and 
laws of human life as it should be lived according to 
the purpose of the Creator, and as He lived it. They 
are different from those of human life as it was, 
and as it is ordinarily pursued under natural im- 
pulses. Men confessed their truth and binding char- 
acter as they confess the truth of a mathematical 
axiom when it is presented. They saw that they were 
the principles and laws by which life must be gov- 
erned if it would be perfect, and they look forward 
to such a life as He lived when they shall be ‘‘per- 
fected.’’? Some: of these laws, indeed, had been par- 
tially apprehended by religious teachers before our 
Lord’s coming; yet in the breadth and depth and 
fulness of His teaching it was declared that ‘‘never 
man spake as this man.’? Whence had He this knowl- 
edge which has been improving human society ever 
since? It was recognized as a guide to a higher human 
life; in short, as divine wisdom, and He was recognized 
as ‘‘a teacher come from God.’’ He declared that the 
principles and laws which He taught were those of 
the ‘‘kingdom of heaven,’’ which He came to estab- 
lish upon earth. According to the ‘‘Gospel of Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God’’ (Mark 1:1), the kingdom is 
here in its incipiency and imperfection, and the prin- 


NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 91 


ciples and laws which are to control and rule men’s 
lives are those which prevail among the saints in the 
life above. Hence we offer the prayer: ‘‘Thy king- 
dom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven.’’ It is just as important to live righteously 
in this world as in the next. The prayer is possible 
because we know, through His revelation, how God’s 
will is done in heaven. Whence had He this positive, 
authoritative knowledge? If we accept His word He 
brought it down from above. If we reject that view 
the problem remains unsolved and insoluble. 

Your objection to His divine character because His 
precepts and revelations were given to men in terms 
suitable to dwellers upon earth instead of in terms 
of the supernatural life where they are observed seems 
to me to lack force. The ‘‘single tongue of the saints 
in heaven,’’ expressive of spiritual and heavenly 
things which ‘‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,”’ 
would have conveyed no meaning to the many-tongued 
dwellers upon earth. I would act foolishly if I lec- 
tured to students in a tongue they did not understand. 
A description of the future life of the disembodied 
soul, or in the spiritual body of the resurrection, 
given in terms of that life, would be unintelligible; 
given in terms of this life, they would not describe it. 
Earthly terms are drawn from objects of the senses: 
but when this body and its senses are no more such 
terms cannot apply. Hence the Nirvana of the Bud-: 
dhist is neither being nor not-being, because the terms 
of our worldly life are irrelative to it. Our guaranty 
of such a life is the character of God in whom we 
believe, and whose existence you grant. Its reality 


92 NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL 


and blessedness cannot be sensibly known now, but 
they can be substantiated by faith in God. If it is 
what ‘‘God has prepared for men who love Him?’’ 
we can be satisfied of its supreme value, though no 
imagination can depict or human tongue describe it. 

The acceptance of our Lord’s nature as divine af- 
fords us a satisfactory explanation of His life and 
mission which are otherwise inexplicable. Then the 
Resurrection completes harmoniously the work of His 
earthly life in opening up before men a life beyond, 
and solves the great problem, and explains the ‘Swhy”’ 
of the life in earth. The gift of the Holy Spirit 
for the ‘‘more abundant life’’ opened before men by 
His resurrection, which is to be attained by “‘as many 
as receive Him’’ and live according to the code of 
the kingdom of heaven which He revealed, makes a 
beneficent and logical whole. Compare this with the 
whole realm of philosophic and religious specula- 
tion,—or, pardon me, with your own ‘‘cosmological 
and anthropological’’ system of speculation,—and it 
has a completeness and simplicity that they all lack. 
You offer no reason for the world—neither cause nor 
object of existence, and I fear your followers will be 
few when they come to measure ‘‘the length, the 
breadth and depth and height”’ of a religious system 
long ago condemned and evicted, but rehabilitated in 
modern terms, and again proposed to men as some- 
thing new. 


THE GOSPEL ONLY AN IDEAL 93 


XIV 
THE GOSPEL ONLY A SYSTEM OF IDEALISM 


The view of the Gospel as ‘‘purely a system of 
idealism’’ presents an interesting problem for dis- 
cussion. An abstract term is substituted for a person. 
It is not defined and its significance is rather vague. 
Plato made ideas the substance of the divine mind, 
but your contention is that ‘‘all the potentialities of 
the religious life are inherent, not extraneous realli- 
ties,’? and therefore ideas are inherent if they are to 
serve a religious purpose. You add that ‘‘after His 
death,’’ not before, ‘‘ Jesus was, so to speak, clothed 
and buried in the Christ idealism’’; and ‘‘if He 
had never lived the new God, Christ, to whom Chris- 
tian idealism had given birth ages before Jesus was 
born, would have continued to exist, and so Chris- 
tianity, in its essence of unitarianism and universal- 
ism would have been in the world as a permanent 
and resistless movement.’’ ‘‘Historicity,’’ you say, 
has nothing to do with religion and ‘‘Christ without 
idealism would have been nothing.’’ Over against 
this statement we place the historic fact that Chris- 
tianity began with the men who said that they knew 
Him, and was propagated not as a ‘‘philosophic 
idealism’? but as knowledge concerning the Lord of 
heaven and earth; and ‘‘Christian idealism’’ was 
born into the world as the philosophic content of the 
Gospel. Its beginning is as clearly marked as any 
fact in history. People have always become Chris- 


94 THE GOSPEL ONLY AN IDEAL 


tians from the preaching of Christ and not from ‘‘the 
idealism which had been in the world ages before 
Christ was born.’’ The new elevation of soul result- 
ing from His life and teachings, when perverted into 
the coining of abstractions by the brood of gnosties, 
produced ‘‘philosophical idealism’’ to your heart’s 
content, but it was always repudiated as a substitute 
for Jesus Christ. There is abundant evidence from 
heathen authors, and particularly from antagonists, 
political and philosophical, that it was hostility to 
the man Jesus and not to ‘‘philosophical idealism’’ 
which sent Christians to the lions. No; history shows 
that the preaching of Christ as He is portrayed in 
the Gospels is the parent, not the offspring, of 
Christian ideas. 

An idea has no inherent power to produce action; 
that calls for an act of the will. It is a ‘‘pattern”’ 
to guide power in producing ‘‘form,’’ and for impart- 
ing ‘‘qualitative, disposition’’ or character. Like a 
beautiful object, it awakens a desire to possess it; but, 
as Hooker says, ‘‘Desire is only the will’s solicitor.’’ 
It moves the will to action. 

IT cannot take your view. Our friends write about 
**ideas’’ as if, like the ‘‘phenomenal universe,’’ they 
produce themselves. Now, Ruskin has pointed out 
that we can have no idea of a new animal distinct 
from those known. Given the knowledge of a man 
and a horse and one can imagine a Centaur by a 
combination of ideas; but without these ideas it is 
impossible. The Christian ideas are propagated and 
spread by the Gospel and do not ‘‘evolve’’ of them- 
selves. Much as was done by ‘‘men sent from God’’ 


THE GOSPEL ONLY AN IDEAL 95 


before Christ came and which was embraced in His 
life and teachings when He came does not prevent 
Christian ethics from standing out clear, distinct and 
unmistakable, above all other ethical ideas in the 
world. They are due to Him; not He to them, In 
the newly discovered ‘‘Logia’’ of Christ it is easy 
to pick out the genuine. It seems to me that such rea- 
soning is on the ‘‘hysteron proteron’’ system, as the 
Greeks said; in common speech it puts ‘‘the cart be- 
fore the horse.’’ 

I think it is undeniable that the people who even 
in such an imperfect degree as it obtains at present 
profess Christianity are the most enlightened, power- 
ful and richest in the world. It would be difficult to 
find ten miles square on the inhabited parts of the 
earth outside of the control of Christian people where 
life and property are safe for twenty-four hours. 
Christianity has a record which shows that ‘‘it 
works’’ successfully for righteousness as no other 
religion has ever done. This should commend it to 
a pronounced Darwinian because it is according to 
the law of the ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ and he owns 
that ‘‘in the moral and religious spheres Jesus was 
relatively much higher and greater’’ than other teach- 
ers. And here let me point out that the facts of the 
moral and religious world are just as certain and 
important as other facts in the physical world; and 
‘¢science,’’ truly such, cannot ignore them. Does one 
say that some religious teachings are erroneous? True, 
but has not physical science also made mistakes? But 
we do not reject it on that account. Do not our 
friends complain that the religious records do not 


96 THE ATONEMENT 


give a correct account of the facts in the material 
world? Can they then expect to furnish religious 
facts from material sources for spiritual edification? 


XV 
THE ATONEMENT 


I shall venture to say something about two of the 
doctrines of the New Testament which you pas- 
sionately condemn. 

1. Many speak with marked violence of the ‘gross 
superstition’’ which caused people all over the world, 
through countless ages, to offer sacrifices of animals 
and sometimes of their own children to propitiate an 
offended deity, or to obtain some coveted boon, and 
they speak as though Christianity was responsible 
for it. On the,contrary, Christianity alone came with 
a message of salvation to men. As scientific men 
they had before them an appalling fact, or phe- 
nomenon, to be examined; and as philosophers, to be 
accounted for. They have, no doubt, observed that 
men’s views touching sacrifices are very old. Accord- 
ing to the Bible they are precisely those which brought 
about the first murder. We ask, why did men do 
those things? Because the deity was offended with 
them and they desired to propitiate him, or because 
their deity delighted in burnt-offerings or in the blood 
of innocent creatures? Perhaps if you had consid- 
ered the matter thoroughly you would have seen that 
Jesus had to deal with this great fact in a satisfying 


THE ATONEMENT 97 


way if He was to stop it, and that could be done 
only by removing the cause. The New Testament 
writers, especially the writers of the epistles, so rep- 
resent it, and the dreadful custom has almost en- 
tirely ceased and Christians alone can explain why. 

This custom is too important to be lightly dis- 
missed by referring to it only as due to ‘‘grovelling 
superstition,’’ as though that explained it. For ages 
upon ages, wherever we turn our attention, the blood 
of innocent creatures, and of men, women and some- 
times children, was shed as a religious rite. In the 
forests of Germany and Britain the limbs of horses 
and dogs were hung as sacrifices upon the trees and 
the Druids are charged with offering human sacri- 
fices. Among more savage tribes pools of human 
blood were at times created by killing men and women. 
In civilized Greece and Rome officers were appointed 
by the state to have charge of the sacrifices. In an 
Asian city, when Paul and Barnabas were hailed as 
gods oxen decked with garlands were brought forth 
to be slain in their honor. In Greek tragedy the 
Nemesis pursues the evil-doer ‘‘in sandals shod with 
wool,’’ | 


“With unhurrying chase, 
And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,’’ 


but inexorable in judgment. In lands as far apart 
as Lystra and Mexico, neither of which knows of the 
other’s existence, the custom of propitiatory sacrifice 
obtained. In the latter the Spanish conquistadores 


98 THE ATONEMENT 


found the most elaborate provision made for the an- 
nual sacrifice of the noblest and most perfect youth 
in the empire. On far distant Minorca there is in a 
secluded forest an enclosure and mound, at the foot 
of which was constructed a permanent altar of stone 
for human sacrifices such as the Spaniards found in 
Mexico. It is attributed to the old Pheenicians or 
Carthaginians who had anciently occupied the terri- 
tory. The specifications might be largely extended. 
It is idle to try to dismiss so important, so universal 
and so continued an observance by pronouncing the 
word ‘‘superstition,’’? and not even undertaking to de- 
fine ‘‘superstition,’’ or explain what it evolves. The 
custom must have had some deep-lying, some funda- 
mental cause in human nature itself. 

Buddhism, if I am not mistaken, proclaims an in- 
exorable law of rewards and punishments for good 
and evil, effectual, if not in this life, then in another. 
As I understand it, the succession of one life from 
another in that system makes the second man, who 
springs from a former man, the inheritor of the 
being and moral record but not of the consciousness 
of the first, though he is held responsible for the 
evil which the first did. Every man must pay the 
penalty of the evils of all of his forbears. Freedom 
can come only by suffering for all previous sin not 
yet fully atoned for. Suffering for sin is the eternal 
law and has propitiatory virtue, and hence suffering 
is a holy thing; for only through suffering is the 
way of salvation. 

I do not mean to deny that in the relations of man 
with the spiritual world with which he has affinity 


THE ATONEMENT 99 


through his spiritual nature there may be, and I 
believe there are, reasons beyond human understand- 
ing which eall for expiation such as can be made 
only by the surrender of life; but I propose to con- 
fine myself to such limits as objectors have prescribed 
and deal with it simply from the human point of 
view. Among the Jews where sacrifices had been 
elaborately provided for they were avowedly meant 
as an atonement for the sins of men. I speak now 
only of the bloody sacrifices. The proposed modern 
religious scheme entirely ignores sin, and of course 
has made no provision for deliverance from it. Yet 
it was the consciousness of sin which was the cause 
of sacrifices. It is true that until the beginning of 
the Roman Empire, if I rightly understand the mat- 
ter, the Hebrew or Christian idea of sin, whose end, 
if attained, would be deicide, was not everywhere 
realized, but only the idea of ‘‘demerit.’’ This per- 
sisted, and to quiet the troubled conscience sacrifices 
were constantly repeated, because they were felt to 
be only palliatives. I think that the ideas of ‘‘de- 
merit’’ and ‘‘sin’’?’ must have had a common 
origin, since they worked out in the same way—in 
sacrifices. As the sacrificial victims had been conse- 
erated to God and had been accepted by Him, they 
were consumed by the worshippers as food returned 
to them again by God for the renewal of life. At 
the bottom of the sense of ‘‘sin’’ or ‘‘demerit’’ in 
man there was the uneasy consciousness that, as 
Goethe says, they did not ‘‘fit the sphere’’ in which 
they lived. They came short of living such a life 
as they ought to live, 


100 THE ATONEMENT 


As men grew up into a fuller life the sense of 
‘‘demerit’’ among the Romans and Greeks partook 
more and more of the spirit of heaviness and depres- 
sion in its Hebrew ‘‘sense’’ of ‘‘sin,’’ and deprived 
life of its joy. Many thought life not worth living. 
It was an age of sadness. Suicide became reasonable, 
and therefore frequent. 

Lucretius (cire. 60 B. C.) wrote passionately in 
condemnation of the superstition by which men’s 
minds were kept under the dominion of darkness, ter- 
ror and ignorance. Men feared death and feared the 
gods. They were weary of life and yet valued it 
highly. A happy life, free from uneasiness and ap- 
prehension, was impossible. ‘‘Every man was afraid 
of himself.’’ The philosopher attributed their rest- 
lessness to their religion. ‘‘Away with the gods!”’ 
‘“‘Lhive according to the scientific teachings of nature 
and all the portents and chimeras which frighten the 
ignorant will be banished.’’ But he had found no 
power to enable men to live righteously, or remove 
the burden from the soul, and it was not until Au- 
gustus revived the old religion that men could settle 
down to a melancholy acquiescence in the decrees 
of fate and submit to what should come. ‘‘ Philosophy 
has never touched the mass of mankind except through 
religion,’’ as Balfour truly says; and again, as an- 
other says, ‘‘La Science sans conscience n’est que le 
trouble de l’dme’’ (only religion can quiet the con- 
science). 

In St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (from among 
whom the old Sabine faith had perished), which 
dwells especially upon sin and the atonement, we 


THE ATONEMENT 101 


have evidence of the importance which the subject 
had in the minds of men in the capital of the world; 
and the writer addresses himself to answering the 
question in the thought of the noblest. Is there to 
be no release from the terrible sense of ‘‘demerit,’’ 
of a ‘‘doom deserved’’ and postponed only by the 
constantly repeated interposition of innocent victims? 
Men knew that sacrifices had lost their power to quiet 
the conscience, and unless there came a ‘‘redeemer”’ 
of the souls of men their race was run. It was ‘‘the 
fulness of time,’’ and according to Tacitus men be- 
gan to listen to the ‘‘vaporings of the Jews’’—‘‘the 
enemies of the human race’’—who declared that a 
great deliverer should come from the East and make 
over the world; and Vergil incorporated it in his 
poems (IV Eclogue). 

It is important to observe that this desolating ‘‘su- 
perstition’’ which our friends characterize in strong 
terms grew up and prevailed under the ‘‘religion of 
nature’’ which they propose to restore in order to 
abolish it. 

The Jewish expectation of a deliverer or redeemer, 
from the fear which oppressed the souls of men, took 
two forms. In one the deliverer was to suppress and 
expel evil from the world and establish the reign of 
righteousness, and by a change in the conditions of 
life to remove the occasions and cause of wrong- 
doing, or at least abscind its consequences. In this 
case ‘‘sin,’’ or ‘‘demerit,’’ was attributed to the en- 
vironment of men who could ‘‘not deal justly, love 
mercy and walk humbly with God,’’ or ‘‘fit the 
sphere’ of human life, because earthly conditions, 


102 THE ATONEMENT 


political, social and industrial, forced them to trans- 
gress the supreme law of conduct. It was a popular 
view then and now. The contention of our friends, 
however, refuses to entertain the question at all. 
But there were those who found the cause of ‘‘de- 
merit,’’ or ‘‘sin,’’? in the man himself, who, through 
‘‘blindness of heart,’’ and a natural inclination to 
follow the lower instead of the higher endowment of 
his composite being, chose what was against his better 
nature, and therefore against the nature of God. 
The adverse conditions of life were the consequences, 
not the cause of his frailty. If deliverance from 
sin and its terrors was to be attained it must come 
from purifying and regenerating the heart. But they 
saw also a significant and instructive fact; the evils 
brought on by sin constantly diminished, corrected 
and removed by the labors, sufferings, sorrows and 
sacrifices of the good who keep the world in its orbit 
by bearing the burdens imposed on men and society 
by sin, and so conserve, to some extent, a wholesome 
condition of life. ‘‘Every day deeds of faith, love 
and renunciation are done by the score and the 
hundred which will never be recorded, and every 
one of which is noble enough to make an immortal 
song,’’ as Owen Wister tells us, and by such is the 
world being constantly redeemed. No world con- 
queror, no reorganizing of human society, while men 
remain the same, would remove sin or atone for its 
consequences. They looked, therefore, for a free- 
dom from sin itself, and so, of course, from the sense 
of sin. Without suffering no evil is escaped or good 
won. And now the fact that the father, the mother, 


THE ATONEMENT 103 


the members of the family or the friend are every 
day taking upon themselves the penalty of the acts 
of the ignorant and wayward to free them from the 
consequences of their transgressions, and that such 
love tends in its nature to reform the transgressors, 
seemed to throw light on the problem of how sin 
could be escaped from or its penalty remitted. This 
principle carried out to completeness solves the prob- 
lem. <A perfect sacrifice, made because of perfect 
love, could deliver man from the utmost consequences 
of sin and restore him to freedom. But God alone 
is perfect in merit, in power and in love; so when 
the Gospel was preached to men it was indeed Good 
News that Jesus Christ, by the love and power of 
God incarnate, had by the perfect sacrifice of Himself 
delivered them from the bondage of sin. A man holy, 
harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, a 
perfect man, animated and living by the spirit of 
perfect love, therefore divine, for God alone is per- 
fect love,—blessing even those who were crucifying 
Him,—satisfied the need of an atonement to the ut- 
most. And ever since the Crucifixion those who be- 
heve in Him have counted all other sacrifices vain, 
and setting the Passion of our Saviour between their 
sin and its reward have found peace of mind. 

This is, of course, only a brief, imperfect and un- 
worthy sketch of the question of sacrifices, their cause, 
purpose, effects, and, finally, the completion of their 
cycle. Yet I beg you to observe that since the tragedy 
of Calvary the ‘‘bloody sacrifices,’’ which are at- 
tributed to. ‘‘superstition’’ as an essential part of 
revealed religion, have gradually ceased and prac- 


104 THE RESURRECTION 


tically ended even among people who have never 
heard the Gospel of Christ. As a philosopher who 
seeks the cause in its effects, this is a fact worthy 
of your consideration. 

With the testimony of the most enlightened people 
before us, who through sixty generations have de- 
clared that by accepting the death of Jesus Christ on 
Calvary as an all-sufficient sacrifice for sin they have 
found peace of mind and freedom from an accusing 
conscience, it seems to me idle to deny that the cross 
has effectually banished the ‘‘superstitious’’ custom 
of which men speak so impatiently, by meeting and 
satisfying the hunger of the soul for reconciliation 
with God. 


XVI 
THE RESURRECTION 


The most persistent of all questions of the soul is 
that of a future life, ‘‘the pivot upon which the 
reason or unreason of all human activities ultimately 
depends,’’ and if Jesus Christ had not answered it 
satisfactorily He would not have been ‘‘the light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’’ The 
Church began its career of blessing with the procla- 
mation of His resurrection from the dead. His life 
had been the one perfect, normal, human life in his- 
tory, and therefore it disclosed, or rather unveiled, 
the eternal law of life to the world. ‘‘He anticipated 
the demand of science to submit everything to the 
test of experience. His experience with life was com- 


THE RESURRECTION yD 


plete and demonstrated, while ours is not. His char- 
acter was unfolded naturally, and while it was un- 
matched, its human aspect was neither so novel nor 
extraordinary that its divine aspect was at once per- 
ceived, but His resurrection naturally completed such 
a life in its disclosure of man’s future.”’ 

Passing by for the present the well-known beliefs 
of many primitive peoples and the speculations of 
the Greeks and Romans of our Lord’s day, we find 
that among the Jews there were believers in a resur- 
rection of the dead, presumably in a body of flesh. 
This would be a revival like that of Lazarus, as re- 
corded in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel accord- 
ing to St. John; but this doctrine was not universally 
held. The Old Testament says little about a future 
life. Some daring thinkers among the prophets, in- 
cluding the writer of the Book of Daniel, ventured 
upon positive statements, but gave no answer to the 
questions, ‘‘How are the dead raised up? and with 
what body do they come?’’ 

There were philosophers who believed in the im- 
mortality of the soul, but such a nebulous existence 
satisfied the longings of but few. There are those 
today who postulate the existence of a supersensible 
substance, supposed to pervade all space and enter 
into all bodies, which is called ‘‘astral,’? and it is 
related that Cesar appeared after his death in a 
form composed of ‘‘astral fluid.’? But this view is 
not widely held so far as I know. 

When our Lord arose from the dead and ap- 
peared to His disciples His answer to the creat 
question was quite different from any that philoso- 


106 THE RESURRECTION 


pher, seer or prophet had imagined. The disciples 
were astonished. ‘‘They thought that they had seen 
a spirit’? and were terrified; naturally, for they were 
in a closed room and yet He had entered in. His 
various appearances, if not contradictory, are not 
reconcilable, in the present state of our knowledge. 
The laws of the physical world no longer bound Him. 
At one time His body became sensible to their touch; 
at another time He vanished out of their sight. I 
think, however, that we may discern the principle 
which governed His post-resurrection appearances. It 
was that of His ubiquity. At any moment, in any 
place the Lord might appear, and so His perpetual 
presence was ingrained in the consciousness of His 
disciples and they understood His promise to be with 
them always, even unto the end of the world. 

It may be worth while to call attention to the evi- 
dence of the Resurrection given by the different 
evangelists as each produces what he deems conclu- 
sive. 

Papias, a contemporary of St. John during the 
latter part of the apostle’s life, and who outlived him, 
tells us that ‘‘Mark, having become the interpreter of 
Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he re- 
membered, without, however, recording in order what 
was either said or done by Christ.’’ In his (or 
Peter’s) account of the Resurrection certain women 
went to the tomb very early in the morning after 
the Sabbath to anoint the body of Jesus and complete 
the burial rites which had been interrupted by the 
setting of the sun on Friday. They found the grave 
empty and a young man sitting on the right side, 


THE RESURRECTION 107 


arrayed in a white robe, and they were amazed. He 
told them that Jesus was risen and pointed to the 
empty tomb and bade them ‘‘tell the disciples and 
Peter, He goeth before you into Galilee; there shall 
ye see Him, as He said unto you.’’ It will be recalled 
that the last time Peter had seen Christ he had denied 
Him, which St. Peter (through St. Mark) had faith- 
fully recorded; and no doubt he regarded the par- 
ticular message to himself as the most precious evi- 
dence of his reinstatement into the apostolic office 
which he had forfeited by his denial. 

In the account of the Resurrection by St. Luke, 
who gathered his materials from those ‘‘who were 
eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word,’’ and who 
was also the companion of St. Paul, we have the rec- 
ord of the same event, or of an event like that given 
by St. Mark, with slight variations. Other women 
appear here and in other accounts. This was what 
we should expect, for no doubt there was more than 
one group of women who, moved by love for the 
Master, made their way to His tomb that morning, 
and they had their various experiences and met and 
exchanged views. One who has seen Eastern women 
go with their tear-bottles to the graves of their loved 
ones, sit down and talk with the dead below, can 
understand this feature of the evidences of the Resur- 
rection which was recorded by the evangelists. 

St. Luke, with freer hand, also gives an account of 
the appearance of Jesus to the disciples on the road 
to Emmaus, of their return to Jerusalem where they 
heard of an appearance to Peter, and how they shared 
in the experience of the assembled disciples, behind 


108 THE RESURRECTION 


closed doors, in an upper room, when our Lord had 
for the moment resumed His human form to estab- 
lish His identity. His work is that of a careful, 
conscientious investigator, who claims to have had 
complete and satisfactory evidence on all points in 
the account which he has given. 

The record of St. Matthew corresponds in most 
particulars with those of the other evangelists. The 
women went to the sepulcher to anoint the body of 
the dead Christ and their love was rewarded by 
learning that He was alive. Now, Matthew had been 
an. official of the government, and Pilate had placed 
a guard of soldiers about the tomb. This fact seemed 
to be neither here nor there to the other evangelists, 
but to the former official it affords evidence of the 
Resurrection which should be conclusive. It is found 
in the twentieth-eighth chapter of his Gospel. Its 
publication in Hebrew, while many of those engaged 
in hushing the, matter up were alive, was a bold chal- 
lenge and seems to have put an end to the dissemina- 
tion of an improbable tale which had been told by 
Jesus’ foes. 

St. John gives the fullest of all the accounts. He 
records. the race to the tomb with the eager Peter 
when they had received news that it was empty; 
the appearance to Mary Magdalene, to the assembled 
disciples on two oceasions, and again at the Sea of 
Galilee; he speaks also of many other ‘‘signs’’ which 
are not reconciled because he believes that enough has 
been said to satisfy at once the believer and the 
most sceptical. There are also statements in the 
records of Matthew, Luke and John which either de- 


THE RESURRECTION 109 


clare or imply the presence of many others on more 
than one occasion. But the object of the evangelists 
is evidently to give the testimony of ‘‘chosen wit- 
nesses’’ who had known Jesus so well that they could 
not be mistaken in identifying Him. St. Paul tells 
us that in the year 59 A. D. there were hundreds 
living who had seen Jesus after He rose from the 
dead. The investigations of St. Luke, who was the 
companion of St. Paul, no doubt justified this state- 
ment. 

We may add as a significant fact that no claim 
was ever made that the body of the dead Christ had 
been found. 

St. Paul declares that he himself had seen the 
risen Christ. His appearance was presumably at 
the time of his conversion, when he was on his way 
to Damascus to arrest the Christians in that city. As 
it was now some years after Christ’s ascension he 
speaks of it as an appearance to one who had been 
“‘born out of due time,’’ or after the appearances 
already enumerated and which had oecurred before 
the ascension of Christ. 

The evidence of the resurrection of Christ was 
sufficient for the disciples who had known Him in 
the flesh, and was deemed adequate by those in the 
most enlightened age of the ancient world whose long- 
ings were satisfied by it. But happily for later ages 
there were men who demanded that the fact be recon- 
ciled with the order of life as already known and 
that it be shown that life’s continuance by a resurrec- 
tion was not inconsistent with the order of nature, 
and they asked, ‘‘How are the dead raised up? and 


110 THE RESURRECTION 


with what body do they come?’’ Show the vital con- 
nection with the present life if there be any; other- 
wise your contention is unreasonable. This called 
for a wide and a philosophical view of the subject, 
and St. Paul proceeded to state why the doctrine was 
not so irreconcilable with our present knowledge of 
the processes of nature as to be unreasonable. 

He first points out that in the order of nature life 
springs from death. The harvest of grain is possible 
because the germ of a new life is released at the mo- 
ment that the seed perishes, and it produces another 
body; that is, the same life continues in a different 
body which it produces under new conditions. The 
plant which is produced is different from the seed 
sown and each kind of grain has its own plant. Then 
he points out that different living creatures, such as 
men, beasts, fishes and birds, have bodies of different 
constituents. Then there are bodies celestial and 
bodies terrestrial—bodies as different from each other, 
phenomenally, as those of earth and heaven, sun, 
moon and stars, but their glory is greater than the 
glory of earthly bodies. Each has its own glory, and 
they differ from each other as earthly bodies differ 
from. each other. 

These earthly bodies of men, like the grain of 
wheat or the flesh of beasts, fishes and birds, are 
liable to weakness, dishonor and corruption; but as 
the perishing grain at the moment of dying releases 
the germ of another living body, which it has within 
itself, so man, as a spiritual being, at the moment of 
death, releases the germ of a spiritual body suitable for 
the advanced life of the spiritual world. 


THE RESURRECTION iil 


While all earthly creatures such as plants and 
animals are confined in their reproductive power to 
the limits of the natural world and reproduce them- 
selves with but little or no change, yet in the increase 
of ‘‘thirty, sixty or a hundred fold’’ in the grains, 
and in the generation of the butterfly from the worm 
(because of which the Greeks found it the symbol 
of the soul, and called it ‘‘psyche’’), there seem to be 
premonitions of a fuller and higher life after death. 

St. Paul repudiates the view that the body of the 
Resurrection is composed of the same constituents 
as the natural body which lives upon the earth, for 
‘‘flesh and blood ean have no inheritance in the 
kingdom of God.’’ The resurrection body must then 
be of a different sort and suited to the conditions of 
the life of a spiritual being. In our ignorance of 
such an existence we can only refer back to what 
we are told concerning our Lord’s post-resurrection 
life. We see that He was no longer subject to the 
laws of the physical world any more than thought 
and emotion are controlled by gravity or other laws 
' of matter. There was absolute freedom from the 
limitations which restrict our actions and those of 
other earthly living beings, such as beasts, aaa and 
birds, who have earthly bodies. 

St. Paul has shown that there are earthly bodies 
of different constituents and heavenly bodies which 
differ in glory. He now contrasts the earthly body 
with the resurrection body. He calls the former a 
‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘psychical’’ body; that is, a body fit 
for the souls in the natural life of the world. Else- 
where he has pointed out that man is composed of 


(112 THE RESURRECTION 


spirit, soul and body (I Thess. 5:23). As Hooker 
states it, the animals have souls in the apostolic 
analysis of being, and these souls have power to con- 
trol and use their bodies within the limits prescribed 
for each other. So man endowed with an animal life 
can compel the body to do much to which it is averse. 
It is a ‘‘psychical’’ body—a body controlled by the 
psyche, or soul. 

The animal, beast, bird or fish is amply endowed 
for its habitat on earth, but in man there are other 
constituents which the earthly body is only imper- 
fectly fitted to serve, and which, while realized par- 
tially through the instrumentality of the bodily 
organs, are independent of the body for their ex- 
istence. Such are moral ideas, which are faintly in- 
timated in some animals, and religion, of which they 
show no trace. This endowment elevates the whole 
physical nature of man above that of other psychical 
or natural beings and gives him dominion over them. 
While the solitary spider weaves a web, and ants, 
bees and beavers form communities and build eommon 
habitations, these are but a faint prophecy of the 
cities built by men. And such works are possible only 
by reason of moral principles which animals do not 
possess, and which receive their power from the 
sanction of religion or the spiritual nature, the pos- 
session of which animals, as I have said, have given 
no indication. 

This spiritual nature is the essence of humanity ; 
without it man would be only a beast. As far as 
it is disregarded man degenerates and gravitates 
downward. It is only by constant struggle against 


THE RESURRECTION 113 


the animal proclivities that the spirit manifests its 
intrinsic nature. It must be free from the weights 
and limitations of the psychical body to realize its 
aspirations. Such has been the teaching of many phi- 
losophers, but they have not been able to explain 
how any power in man can function without an 
organism, nor even suggest any organism which 
would serve its purpose. The psychical body perishes 
in death, and so far as men can see the spiritual 
nature of men ends an abortive existence, and temples, 
altars and shrines are tombs of humanity’s baseless 
hopes, ardent desires and spiritual possibilities. 

The resurrection satisfied the yearnings of men, by 
disclosing a life which met the exigencies of the situ- 
ation. It answered the question, ‘‘ With what body 
do they (the dead) come?’’ by revealing the existence 
of a different kind of a body which is suited to the 
conditions of a new and higher life and is under the 
control of the spirit of man, just as the psychical body 
is subject to the soul in the earthly life. As the latter 
is a natural or psychical body, so this is a ‘‘spiritual 
body.’’ St. Paul declares that there are bodies of 
both kinds, of ‘‘ bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial, ’’ 
therefore he asks, ‘‘ Why should it be thought a thing 
incredible with you that God should raise the dead ?’’ 

Here men shake their heads. They have had no 
knowledge of such beings. It is true that our litera- 
ture from the earliest to the latest contains references 
to aérial beings which art has depicted and poetry 
sung, but they are regarded only as creations of the 
imagination. A sober statement that beings with 
bodies of, possibly, greatly attenuated forms of mat- 


114 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 


ter may be realities as actual as the creatures of flesh 
and blood with which we are acquainted is too heavy 
a demand on credulity. Yet St. Paul seems to assert 
that bodies different from our present bodies are not 
illogical; and I think that a comprehensive view of 
the scientific discoveries in chemistry, physics and 
biology and psychology will enable one to admit the 
possibility, or even probability, of living creatures 
with bodies of very attenuated and pure forms of 
matter, or of a kind with which we are not acquainted. 
Do we know all the elements in the living tissues of 
our present bodies? 

The apostle reasoned from the scientific knowl- 
edge of his own day. His reasoning met the approval 
of his contemporaries. The fuller light and knowl- 
edge of the twentieth century, if applied to this great 
subject in the same broad and candid spirit in which 
it is applied to the study of other subjects, may open 
new avenues of thought and refute or strengthen 
St. Paul’s reasoning. 


XVII 
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 


You write: ‘‘Your orthodox conception proceeds 
upon the assumption that the Christian sacraments 
are supernatural syringes filled with supernatural 
medicines,’’ ete. 

As I am in Washington and my friend elsewhere, 
I cannot know his mind immediately, nor if we were 


THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 115 


face to face would it be possible, without some me- 
dium. In the latter case he would make some sounds 
which would be a symbolic expression of his thoughts 
and his words would have the significance and value 
of the thoughts themselves. If he used words to mis- 
lead me he would be called by ‘‘a short and ugly 
name.’’ Since I am not with him, he has made cer- 
tain marks on paper and I interpret them and know 
his mind in regard to certain things. 

In a few days I must pay my hotel bill. I have not 
the money here in sight, so I shall write a check on 
a bank and it will be imbued with the character and 
value of money because I am the owner of money 
in the bank and the maker of the check. The char- 
acter and value of the check to the receiver of it 
will depend upon his belief in my honesty. This 
‘‘honesty’’ is an invisible thing; but he thinks I 
am honest, though I doubt that he could prove it 
‘“seientifically’’ beforehand. 

Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Smith or any other Mrs. wears 
a plain gold ring on the fourth finger of her left 
hand. Probably one can buy duplicates of it in a 
jewelry store in any town. But would any other 
have the character and value of the wedding ring? 
Why not? Because that ring has in it, somehow, 
the honor of her children, the glory of her woman- 
hood. 

‘‘Only a scrap of paper,’’ said the one ambassador 
to another in regard to a treaty guaranteeing the 
neutrality of a certain country to which both countries 
were parties. ‘‘No,’’ said the other, ‘‘it is the honor 
of my country’’; and thousands of men have died 


1146 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 


and are dying daily because of that ‘‘serap of 
paper.’’ 

A soldier must be loyal, obedient and self-sacrific- 
ing. These words represent qualities of the soul. 
They are invisible and are known only to the man 
himself. What guaranty can he give that he pos- 
sesses them? He presents in the old Roman word 
his “‘sacramentum,’’ or soldier’s oath, and on the 
strength of this symbolic act the honor and safety 
of his country are confided to him. 

Can any man explain to me the essence of a trans- 
action by which I may become the owner of a tract 
of land which my neighbor owns in Ohio which I 
could not take personal possession of, by my hands, 
if I were there, which I have never seen and probably 
shall never see, by passing over to him a check on 
a bank? 

In brief, all social and business life is dependent 
upon the recognition of the ‘‘sacramental principle.’’ 
There is an inner reality which we cannot apprehend 
directly or know in its nature, but which can be rep- 
resented by symbol. 

How are you going to express or reveal things 
spiritual otherwise than symbolically? We must de- 
pend upon tokens and pledges of them, as we do 
in regard to the invisible things of life. These sen- 
sible tokens by acts of mental, moral and spiritual 
intent, purpose and appointment, are in some way 
endowed with the nature and value of spiritual reali- 
ties to those who receive them in faith, just as other 
tokens are received by those who believe in them. 

According to St. Paul the universe is a sacramental 


THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 117 


symbol. of God’s presence, for he tells us that ‘‘the 
invisible things of God from the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even His eternal power and 
godhead.’’ The supreme sacrament is in the incarna- 
tion of the son of God in the man Jesus Christ. When 
men saw Jesus did they see God? No, for God is 
a spirit ‘‘whom no man hath seen nor can see.’’ They 
saw the perfect man Jesus Christ, in whom ‘“‘dwelleth 
all the fulness of the godhead bodily,’’ and so ‘‘God 
was manifested in the flesh.’’ 

Our Lord used this universally accepted principle 
of symbolical representations when He would assure 
His disciples of His real though invisible presence 
after He should have departed from their sight and 
had entered upon the resurrection life of power and 
glory. ‘This they were to share with Him as truly 
as they had shared His earthly life of humiliation. He 
was then visibly present in flesh and blood, a living 
person; so He took bread and wine, the sustaining 
elements of natural life, and of which His present, 
visible body was constituted, saying, ‘‘Take, eat, for 
this is My body; drink ye all of this, for this is My 
blood,’’ ete. ‘‘This do in remembrance of Me’’—in 
token of His presence, and as evidence that they were 
livingly united to Him and would share in His resur- 
rection though He was invisible. It was to be to them 
in the future what His visible presence was to them 
at that moment. No doubt by this sacrament He 
completed whatever was involved in the worshipper’s 
participation in the old sacrificial offering by eating 
the flesh of the slain animal; but by the substitution 


118 THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE 


of the symbols of a eucharistic offering—the fruits 
of the earth—He reinstated man, in His own con- 
sciousness, in a relation of innocence before God; and 
so henceforth a bloody sacrifice of propitiation became 
impossible to a Christian. 

May I refer to the old record of Genesis, which 
in this connection seems to me significant as the 
beginning of a cycle which was completed at Calvary ? 
Call it an allegory, if you will. When Cain and Abel 
brought their offerings to God, Cain brought the 
Fruits of the Ground which were the Eucharistic 
offerings before a consciousness of sin had awakened 
in the mind. But Abel brought a lamb as a propitia- 
tory sacrifice due from one who felt himself a sinner. 
The result all can recall. In after times we find 
the two forms of sacrifice parallel. There were the 
Isis cakes, the Shewbread, the Eleusinian and Vestal 
offerings—everywhere the Eucharistic or thank offer- 
ings to God for life; and also everywhere the pro- 
pitiatory offerings of blood as an atonement for sin. 
But in the Lord’s Supper Christians now plead the 
sacrifice of Christ on Calvary as the sufficient atone- 
ment and offer Bread and Wine, ‘‘the Fruits of the 
Earth,’’ the old Eucharistic offering of sinless men, 
because by the Sacrifice on Calvary the man who is 
livingly united to Christ is counted sinless. 


OTHER CULTS a 


XVIII 
A WORD ABOUT OTHER CULTS 


A marked difference seems to be made by you be- 
tween the authentic character of the Gospels as 
portraying the life and words of Christ and contain- 
ing His teachings and the scriptures of Buddhism. 
The former are treated as ‘‘traditions’’ which were 
‘‘modified as they were passed from one to another 
until, at a time far distant from the Christian era, 
they were written down and form the Sacred Books 
of the New Testament.’’ But no doubt is expressed 
in regard to the reputed sayings of Gotama-Buddha, 
although the form in which they were delivered 
was due to the fact that they were to be memorized 
and transmitted orally from generation to generation. 
At a day much further from Gotama than the in- 
terval between Christ and the written Gospels the 
sayings of Buddha were reduced to writing. This 
difference in treatment seems unfair. 

We are constantly reminded that many of the doec- 
trines and precepts of Jesus are restatements of those 
delivered by previous religious teachers, and there- 
fore cannot be claimed to be Christian. Indeed, they 
are sometimes praised when presented as teachings of 
Buddha, but lose their value when uttered by Christ. 
If we reflect, however, that Christ declared that He 
‘‘came to fulfil’’ or complete what was imperfect in 
men’s knowledge of God we should expect to find 
much of whatever truth had been delivered by re- 


120 OTHER CULTS 


ligious teachers before His day. As an example of 
repeating, completing and incorporating in His teach- 
ings what others had taught before Him we may in- 
stance the Golden Rule of Confucius, ‘‘Do not to 
another what you would not have him do to you,”’ 
and its embodiment and completion in the Golden 
Rule of Christ, ‘‘Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is 
the law and the prophets.’’ Here we have the incor- 
poration in His teachings of what had been taught 
before in ‘‘the law’’ and by ‘‘the prophets.’’ It in- 
cludes what the Chinese sage had taught, but gives 
the principle a wider range and an active character. 
There is a vast difference between going through life 
without doing evil to one’s fellow-man, and possibly 
indifferent to his interests or ignoring him entirely, 
and going through life aiding and doing him good. 
The Chinese precept calls for no touch between men 
at all; the second calls for lively sympathy and asso- 
ciation. 

It is evident that the identification of the sayings 
of other religious teachings with those of the Gospels 
may be pushed too far and mislead the ordinary 
reader. In looking over Plato’s account of the say- 
ings of Socrates we shall be reminded from time to 
time of certain New Testament precepts, but the 
context and circumstances under which they were 
uttered will show that quite another thought was in 
his mind. When parallels to Christian maxims are 
quoted from Buddhistie writings we cannot be sure 
that the Buddhist teacher meant to express exactly 
the Christian idea. It is openly said by some per- 


OTHER CULTS 121 


sons who live in the Hast that the religious teachers 
repudiate the Christian meaning that some Western 
writers have attached to their precepts. As an ex- 
ample of the manner in which identification of Bud- 
dhist and Christian precepts is effected the following 
may suffice: ‘‘The disciple, whatever he does— 
whether going forth or coming back, standing or 
walking, speaking or silent, eating or drinking—is 
to keep clearly in mind all that it means; the tem- 
porary character of the act, its ethical significance, 
and above all that behind the act there is no actor 
(goer, seer, eater, speaker) that is an eternally per- 
sistent unity.’’ It is the Buddhist analogy to the 
Christian precept: ‘‘Whether therefore ye eat or 
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
God.”’ 

In this example the identity of the Buddhist ad- 
monition and St. Paul’s precept does not seem obvious 
at first sight. The Buddhist may have meant more or 
less than or something quite different from what St. 
Paul intended. 

Then, again, it is worthy of notice that the Buddhist 
teachings were admittedly delivered from time to 
time during the period from about 600 B. C. to 300 
A. D., and it is as conceivable that some of them may 
have been borrowed from Christianity as the reverse. 
Wherever the following are found they have the tone 
of the New Testament teachings, ‘‘By love alone we 
ean conquer,’’ ‘‘Kill not,’’ ‘‘A lustful mind is adul- 
tery,’’ though here it is limited to ‘‘ Another man’s 
wife’? and does not reach the words of the Gos- 
pel. ‘‘The blind cannot guide the way,’’ ‘‘Who 


122 OTHER CULTS 


gives a little water shall receive an ocean in re- 
turn.’’ 

The worship of Mithras was brought into the Ro- 
man Empire just before the Christian era by some 
captives taken in war. It gained the imperial pat- 
ronage or encouragement, supposedly because it 
taught the divine right of rulers. In Constantine’s 
day it was practically suppressed and documentary 
evidence of its teachings disappeared. It is said to 
have celebrated ‘‘a communion of bread and wine,’’ 
and to have taught the resurrection of the dead, and 
we are assured that ‘‘there was no borrowing from 
Chrisianity.’’ It was an antagonist of the Gospel— 
some say the greatest at that time. It ‘‘excluded 
women,’’ and courted Roman paganism and was both 
monotheistic and polytheistic at the same time. The 
doctrines of the Parsees of India, called fire wor- 
shippers, are attributed to this cult. The Deity was 
the Persian God of Light, and his antagonist the 
God of Darkness. The struggle between good and 
evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, has been elaborated and 
either deliberately or instinctively the Christian God 
and Satan have become largely the inheritors of their 
natures and their strife. Many passages in the New 
Testament are quoted to show the identity of teach- 
ing. This is regarded or represented as in some way 
invalidating the teachings of our Lord. It is surpris- 
ing at times to see these doctrines praised in the 
mouth of Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius and other 
sages, and then declared to have no value in the New 
Testament. But if Christ came to complete revela- 
tions already given and imperfectly understood, we 


THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 123 


should expect to find them in His teachings and 
revelations. 

I will only add that these are none of them ‘ ‘gospels 
of salvation,’’ for, as St. Peter said to the rulers of 
the Jews, ‘‘there is none other name under heaven 
given among men, whereby we must be saved”? (Acts 
4:12). It is the characteristic of the arena of Chris- 
tianity which separates it from all other cults and 
exalts it above them that it alone proffers salvation 
to man. Christ alone declared, ‘‘Thy sins be forgiven 
thee.’? After Esau had forfeited his birthright ‘‘he 
found no place of repentance, though he sought it 
carefully with tears’’; but when the Prodigal Son 
returned repentant he was welcomed with rejoicing. 


XIX 
THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 


Now, my dear friend, I am sure that if you have 
read as far as this you are quite tired out, so I will 
wind up what I had to say but have not said with a 
few general remarks. 

I think we must accept the fact that there has 
been a great loosening of the religious convictions of 
people owing to a general change in the religious 
view-point, and naturally the mind wants to find 
‘“something just as good,’’ but which will, if possible, 
still leave them free to follow their natural inclina- 
tions. The revival of what seems to me the old 
Epicurean doctrine, as Lucretius understood it, under 


124 THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 


the egis of Darwinianism seemed to present a sub- 
stitute, though today’s scepticism in reality does not 
ordinarily attack the moral precepts of essential Chris- 
tianity, but only the inferences from them which have 
been presented by religious teachers and exaggerated 
by opponents. To what is called ‘free thought,’’ or 
release from ecclesiastical authority, it seemed neces- 
sary to nullify the evidence in favor of Christianity. 
Hence much destructive criticism and at times reck- 
less assertions. The religious field is always open to 
antagonists and those who attack religion have never 
lacked followers. In the present crisis we have a 
good chance to see in the official publication of the 
‘‘White Papers’’ and ‘‘Orange Papers’’ and papers 
of other colors what men will believe and say under 
the ‘‘tyranny of ideas.’’ We have before us, if we 
read the papers issued by the great scholars of Ger- 
many, a striking example of how incapable men be- 
come—both sceptics and Christian scholars—of under- 
standing the true state of things, at least as they 
appear to Americans. 

If, again, we read the French encyclopedists and 
philosophers who flourished just before the French 
Revolution we shall be surprised, I am sure, at the 
number of points in which they have anticipated our 
present-day critics. I think La Mettrie’s ‘‘L’Homme 
Machine’’ will quite agree with the contention that 
‘‘from the time of his emergence out of the animal 
estate to the human man has been working out his 
own salvation and his success has been due entirely 
to his own unaided efforts’’—except perhaps his con- 
clusion that when death comes ‘‘la farce est jowée’’— 


THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 125 


corresponding pretty nearly to that of Lucretius, 
where they have, at least, a logical result. We know 
that religion came back again as soon as men recovered 
from the ‘‘tyranny of such ideas,’’ and were capable 
of ‘‘seeing clearly, purposing purely and acting 
nobly,’’ for the best interests of mankind. 

When a student comes to the study of psychology 
and metaphysics a new and fascinating world is open 
before him. The operations of the mind in its rela- 
tion to the external and internal worlds are like the 
operation of the organs of sense to early childhood. 
A language is required to express and fix the knowl- 
edge and it is largely based on the language of sense 
accommodated to the new field of knowledge, and 
seems to carry with it the same actuality. It is 
reinforced by the unquestionable certainty of axiom- 
atic truths which are then discovered or consciously 
realized. Hence the temptation to consider abstract 
terms which express mental states only, as the eternal 
foundation of the universe. As they are largely used 
in the sciences, expressions in these terms seem to be 
scientifically established. 

The ‘‘tyranny of ideas’’ has its executive in the 
‘tyranny of words.’’ Of course it is well known 
that words are the tools of the mind. Until a thought 
is formulated in words it is indefinite and evanescent. 
But what we call a thing, an orange or a man, for 
example, is the mind’s impression of it, and experi- 
ence has often shown us that such an impression may 
be very different from the thing itself. Fuller knowl- 
edge may seriously modify our early view. But in 
any case the mental impression which the name 


126 THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 


stands for can never be satisfactorily shown to be 
really the same as the thing itself. 

When we find a number of objects which affect us 
the same way we make a unit of them by forming 
them into a class, or genus, or species, and then we 
objectify them as though the class existed outside of 
our own minds independently, as a new external ob- 
ject. Yet it is clear that it is only factitious, i. e., 
a made-up thing. What it is really is a term which 
represents to the mind an aggregation of individual 
mental impressions, none of which was true to the 
external entity. If you say there must be some 
reality corresponding to the mental conception, as 
the old realists did, the answer is that it may be a 
reality of thought; it cannot be shown to have an 
external or objective existence. You go down to a 
fruit store in a city and see a new kind of fruit, a 
single example. You admire it and learn its name. 
You find one that looks like it in another store, in 
a third store, in a dozen stores successively, and you 
have a new species of fruit—the Japanese persimmon. 
But you may in reality have seen only the same one 
put on exhibition successively in different places. 
Your ‘‘class’’ is only an individual thing. It may 
be only a ‘‘sport.’’ All genera and species are at 
best an aggregate of individuals, of which the mind 
has made something that has no existence outside of 
itself. One cannot persuade himself that there is 
really no genus homo; but in truth we know of noth- 
ing but individuals. It is said that there are many 
leaves in Vallombrosa, but it is asserted that ‘‘no 
two leaves are exactly alike.’? I suppose that this 


THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 127 


is true of all objects, things as well as persons. The 
Creator has put His special seal on each thing that 
He has made and ‘‘He ealleth them all by their 
names.’’ We, however, can know things only in a 
general way and often only by artifice. The need of 
classification is due to the limitations of our minds. 
By means of it we can deal with a multitude as a 
single thing; while as single things we could deal 
with only half a dozen at a time. Yet the class term 
represents not even our own notion of any particular 
or real unit of the class, but only of those qualities 
in the various individuals which affected our minds 
the same way. It is a figment in which we have more 
confidence often than in the elements of which we have 
constructed it. 

So we have abstract terms which the mind has 
made in order to represent certain qualities, or fea- 
tures, or characteristics, of objects external or mental. 
_“Tdea’’ is a favorable example. It is something seen 
with ‘‘the mind’s eye.’’ The word is happily asso- 
ciated with another word implying knowledge; hence 
the ‘‘idea’’ seems to be substantial, a real existence, 
outside of and beyond the reach of the senses which 
often deceive us. As testifying to the existence of 
extrasensible entities it is invaluable, but it is an 
abstract term. It represents a mental state of those 
who use it and we cannot assert that it is realized 
in any definite being except God—in Whom, no doubt, 
is found all the truth which we dimly and imperfectly 
are conscious of. Then there is the abstract term 
‘“notentiality,’’? a factitious or made-up term; and 
all the tools which the mind has constructed to aid 


128 THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 


its operations. They have a reality in the minds of 
those who use them, but not even conventional agree- 
ment can give them a substantial existence to serve 
as a basis for religion. Hence the failure of religious 
teaching or theological teachings, in which such philo- 
sophical terms figured so largely. To propose now 
to substitute another lot of mental figments which 
have no speaking acquaintance with religion in their 
place, instead of ‘‘sanctifying the Lord God”’ by re- 
storing His truth, purified of the base mixtures which 
have discredited it, is to go back to the elementary 
struggle of men out of ignorance and superstition, 
and which was quieted by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God. 

Accepting the fact that these notions which men 
propound are spreading and displacing many of the 
old religious views as set forth by ecclesiastical au- 
thority (in abstract terms very often while they are 
scientifically baseless, and often philosophically ab- 
surd), the question arises, What can be done about 
it? The situation is essentially the same as when 
Christ was first preached. Where the cases differ it is 
in degree rather than in kind. The Church has 
handicapped herself for work in this generation by 
loading the Gospel with an accumulation of religio- 
philosophical decisions, interpretations and decrees 
which, however useful they were when enacted, are 
no longer applicable or to be insisted upon as part 
of divine truth, or as inseparable from it. It may 
be that the general public would take a more favor- 
able view of Chrisianity if the churches were. united 
in their efforts. Mutual recognition and codperation 


THE TYRANNY OF WORDS AND IDEAS 129 


might be a step in bringing about a common workable 
organization through which the great forces of re- 
ligion could combine to extend the kingdom of Christ 
more effectually. 

I think there is a drift towards trying to distin- 
guish between Gospel truth and ecclesiastical teach- 
ings, between what is essential and what is conditional, 
what is the substance of the faith and what is neces- 
sary to adapt it to times and seasons. 

We must always remember that our Lord spake 
‘fas one having authority.’’ He was not a contro- 
versialist or disputant. The voice of authority ends 
all strife. 

Organization cannot be dispensed with if the broth- 
erly side of Christianity which separates it so mark- 
edly from a Mohammedanism, where religion is purely 
a matter between a man and his Maker, is to be taken 
into account. But the ecclesiastical organization 
which this essential element of realized Christian 
brotherhood calls for is variable according to the 
wisdom of men for the application of vital principles 
to life. These latter, however, and not the former, 
must be always stressed. Like ‘‘wise scribes we must 
bring forth things new’’ as well as ‘‘old.’? We must 
learn to state the truths of the revelation of Christ 
in terms of modern thought; show their harmony 
with and advance upon other divine truth gath- 
ered from, natural law and history, that they may 
appear not as dissociated from the order of God’s 
providential teachings but as the completion of 
that revelation of divine truth which was imper- 
fectly. set forth as men were able to receive it 


130 A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 


‘fat sundry times and in divers manners.’’ The 
‘‘Christian apologetic’’ is always required for the 
generation in being. If this can be accepted as a poor 
attempt to present one to myself, in order to repeat it 
to others, I shall feel honored. 

I have written it in a very scrappy way. The paper 
is full of repetitions and, I doubt not, errors of many 
kinds; but I pray that even by its faults it may 
lead some to consent that the generations of believing 
men and women who were able to live saintly lives 
through faith in Christ and who died in hope through 
the same faith were not misled into holiness by believ- 
ing a lie. Thistles do not produce figs, nor thorns 
grapes. An old friend who is a philanthropist but 
not much of a ‘‘churechman’’ says that he is a Chris- 
tian because ‘‘Christianity is the only religion which 
tends to make the world what it ought to be.’’ 


XX 
A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 


If we survey the world of thinking men and women 
we find the same problems before them today as in 
the day of the Apostles. Objections to Christianity 
on the ground that men do not live up to its teach- 
ings do not convict Christianity. An effort to im- 
prove life by lowering the standard of conduct would 
be a step backward. Putting aside the objections 
which are brought against organized Christianity 
as inevitable in human institutions, it can hardly be 


A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 131 


denied that Christianity reaches the bottom facts of 
life, its roots go down to the ultimate ground of hu- 
man nature, it deals in a human way with evils and 
it commends its methods to reasonable men because 
they are in harmony with experience and work nat- 
urally in the channels of human action. There has 
been a revolt against some ecclesiastical claims, many 
of which have long ago been surrendered or become 
innocuous but which served a good purpose in their 
day. The adjustment of ecclesiastical order or organi- 
zation and administration to meet modern needs is 
going on apace in all the churches. If we strip 
Christianity of many of the ecclesiastical incrusta- 
tions of the past we shall find that Christ is to the 
twentieth as He was to the first century A. D., ‘‘the 
power of God and the wisdom of God.’’ 

In concluding this long and diffuse paper I own 
that I have something like a sense of shame. It has 
been written a little at a time in a period full of 
cares and anxieties, and therefore may lack unity 
and consecutiveness. But I am not able to do better 
now. So I send it as all that I can do at present. 
But I ought in all honesty to tell you what impression 
your letter made on me. I fear that its publication 
would be treated as a challenge and bring scandal 
upon the Church which you still love, trouble the 
consciences of the devout, deprive many of their re- 
ligious faith and give them nothing in its place to 
interpret life, sustain them in their trials and comfort 
them in their sorrows. All that you have said on 
the different matters treated of has been said and is 
daily said by many. You reckon them at ‘‘three- 


132 A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 


fourths of the intelligent people’’ in the world. If, 
then, it has merits of its own it can make its way 
on its merits. I have been surprised in looking the 
matter over again, after being much disturbed over 
the apparent revolt against our Lord, to find so very 
little that really seems to me to shake the foundations 
of faith. The evidence for revealed or essential 
Christianity is still adequate. 


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